


All the king's men

by Itsprobablyme



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, BAMF Natasha Romanov, BAMF Sharon Carter (Marvel), BAMF Steve Rogers, BAMF pretty much everyone, Gen, Hurt Steve Rogers, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Sharon Carter, Protective Tony Stark, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2018-09-02 12:10:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 51,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8666935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itsprobablyme/pseuds/Itsprobablyme
Summary: This is kind of AU-retelling of Winter Soldier. I am a huge fan of the original movie (which is the property of Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Studios and so on), but I am uncomfortable with the fact that our heroes acted as if in the total vacuum. Big firefight in the DC streets - and no police. Assassination of Nick Fury - and no parallel investigation from the FBI. Tony Stark sits in his tower - and two Avengers make no attempt to drag the second airborne into the team. Why?Well, being a screenwriter myself, I know why. So, I retell the story like a light novel, not restricted by the budget or the  timing or the genre peculiarities. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.Some details of enhanced body functioning are my headcanon.Since English is not my native language, feel free to correct me. Thanks!





	1. A Road To The Sea of Death. Natasha Romanova

**Author's Note:**

> The verse Natasha reciting is Yosano Akiko's "Cowardice", known in USSR due to Strugatsky Brothers' novel 'A Billion Years Before the End of the World', also known as 'Definitely Maybe'.
> 
>  
> 
> Pizdets - fuckup
> 
> Chort tebya poberi - to hell with you.
> 
> Vashu mat! - your mother!

All that happened that day, was a total and utmost _pizdets_.

 

I looked into the operation room through the glass and it suddenly blurred. Oh, shit. It’s not the glass, it’s my eyes.

 

Steve Rogers was there, Maria Hill too. She looked impervious, as always. He looked lost. I was told already that Fury had been shot in Steve's apartment, straight in front of him.

 

“Tell me about the shooter,” I asked Rogers.

 

“He's fast and strong. He had a metal arm.”

 

I swallowed an icy blob suddenly appeared in my throat. It fell down to my stomach and lay there, spreading cold all over my body.

 

All of us were deep in heavy shit. Really heavy.

 

“Ballistics?”

 

“Three slugs. No rifling and completely untraceable,” said Hill.

 

Actually, that was a trace, clear as a moon glade. No rifling meant smooth-bore gun, and it takes a hell of a skill to shoot somebody through the wall three times with a smooth-bore barrel. I could count by my fingers everyone who could do it. With my other hand in a pocket.

 

“Soviet made?” I was grasping at straws. What if it was not him? What if it was some copycat? What if…?

 

“Yeah.”

 

I felt I was about to throw up. And that very moment  Nick Fury flatlined. Medics bustled about him, doing their usual stuff – adrenaline, epinephrine, defibrillation… All in vain.

 

“No,” I whispered. “Don’t do it. Don’t…”

 

But he did. His big brown frame lay grayish pale and motionless, heartbeat stopped, lips parted, breathing _ceased_. He was a moment ago, and now he is no more, his life had gone, past perfect forever. Medics walked away from the body, taking off their masks and bloodstained gloves.

 

I never expected myself to cry over Fury. He was certainly not a man to cry for.

 

God, I never expected myself to cry over anybody, save myself. Look at me now…

 

And Maria… She was crying, too.

 

Doctor recorded the time of death. It was 1:03 A.M. Rogers turned from the glass and walked to the corridor.

 

We grabbed some coffee from the vending machine in the intensive care ward while medics prepared Fury’s body for the viewing. None of us said a word. Rogers held at my wrist for a moment, passing me a paper cup, I nodded. That was it.

 

The only thing I could think that minute was where to run and hide. Though there was not much hope in hiding from him. The only reason I remained alive after our first meeting was I was not is target. So he didn't fire a security round, just left me to lay there and bleed.

 

Now he was sent for Fury, and he performed his mission neatly as always. The only question remained: was Nick Fury his only target?

 

If it was what I think it was, then no way. There were two of us who knew that ‘Lemurian Star’ was fucked up, and now only I remained. Fury was attacked twice: first time right in a street, second – at Rogers’ place. That makes about six hours between the attacks, and he never tried to get to the Triskelion, to connect to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Which means: the S.H.I.E.L.D is compromised. It’s compromised so heavily that its director couldn’t trust anyone. Including me. Aren't we a big dysfunctional family?

 

Though, he trusted Rogers. And, maybe, Hill.

 

Well, had I been in Fury’s place, Rogers would have been my choice, too. He’s a man to trust, full stop. A hero. THE HERO. I worked with him for two years and he was everything I was told he was. He couldn’t get along with Fury very well, because Steve was all about trust and teamwork and Fury (with all due respect) was a manipulative bastard, and when he wanted dirty work to be done, he would send me along with the STRIKE.

 

Just as he did the last time.

 

“We need to take him,” said Hill.

 

“Natasha,” Rogers called.

 

I touched Fury’s cold forehead. He was a manipulative bastard, but he gave me a second chance and I tried hard for him not to regret that decision.

 

There will be no person in the S.H.I.E.L.D to give me the third chance. Clint was far away, out on his mission. Hill has a lot on her plate with Nick’s funeral, and Rogers…

 

He was in no less danger than I, and the best thing I could do was to stay away from Rogers to make them (whoever they are) think that he has nothing to do with all this ‘Lemurian Star’ business. To make them think he was a mere tool, pretty much blunt, used blindfolded.

 

This I did. Strode away from the room, as quick as I could, barely restraining myself from running.

 

Rumlow was there, and Rollins, too. Icy lump grew in me, squeezing my guts. Vashu mat!

 

But it was not me they were after. Rumlow looked over my head, straight at Rogers who followed me down the corridor.

 

“Natasha!”

 

I stopped and turned to Steve.

 

Until that moment I was sure that Fury came to him for help. Because he needed a place to stay low, and despite their constant bickering Rogers respected him deeply. But now I knew for sure that Rumlow was after Rogers, and there was no way I could warn him, except…

 

“Why was Fury in your apartment?” I asked.

 

“I don't know,” he lied. He is bad at lying and I am good at reading people.

 

“Captain, they want you back at SHIELD,” said Rumlow.

 

“Yeah, give me a second.”

 

Run, I wanted to say, run for it! But I  couldn’t say it in front of Rumlow and others.  

 

“They want you now,” Rumlow insisted.

 

“Okay,” Steven turned to me.

 

A technician stuffed the vending machine near us with chocolates, cookies and chewing gums. Rogers looked at it. Then he looked back at me. Two years after defrosting, and he still thinks vending machines amazing?  

 

“You're a terrible liar,” I said, and that was as close to a warning as I could do. Then I walked away.

 

I heard somebody say behind me: “STRIKE team escort Captain Rogers back to SHIELD immediately”.

 

I walked away. Rogers was a big boy, I have seen him kicking asses and taking names for two years. He can take care of himself.

 

_Coward._

 

Shut up.

 

_Traitor._

 

Shut up!

 

_Wimp._

 

SHUT THE FUCK UP!

 

I stopped in the middle of the stairway. I wasn’t so frightened since the day Hulk was chasing me through helicarries bowels. I am not easily scared and I learnt to get along with Hulk since then, but to face death is one thing and to feel your world falling apart again is another. Run and hide and stay low was the best option. It was the only option!

 

If I go after Rogers… If I take this road…

 

_“’If you take this road,_

_If you walk this way,_

_It will lead you straight_

_To the Sea of Death’_

_\- That’s what I was told…”_

 

 To hell with it. I cannot stand brave and bold, alone against world. This is Rogers' thing, he’s that kind of hero, not me.

 

_But you were. You were standing there with Rogers, back to back, kicking asses and taking names. You’re an Avenger._

 

Oh, for the fuck’s sake! It was nice, but now it’s gone. Once we stood as one to protect the world, we did our job and we parted ways after the job had been done.

 

_“So I turned back from the middle of the road,_

_‘Cause I was clever and knew my best interest._

_And since then,_

_Only crossroads,_

_Detours and dead ends_

_Are opened_

_To me.”_

 

There was a book I once liked – _A  Billion Years Before the End of the World_. There was a guy there who challenged the entire world’s order. And he loved Japanese poetry. That’s where I picked this verse from.

 

I was twelve or so. I belonged to the Red Room, studying hard to become an effective killer. But they didn’t want us to be stupid, so library was at our service. I tried to hide my soul in books about the people who could challenge the world.

 

And soon I grew up and found out there were no such people. No one will challenge the world to do what is right. Everyone compromises, in the best case. So did writers, who enchanted me with their tales. So did the Japanese poetess who wrote the verse. So did I, in the end of the day. So did Fury. All of us wandered by crossroads, detours and dead ends.

 

Except Rogers. He always walked he main road, and it led him straight to the Sea of Death, and he crossed that sea.

 

 “ _Chort tebya poberi_ , Rogers,” I sighed aloud. And then I returned to the intensive care ward.

 

STRIKE was gone. So was Hill with Fury’s body.

 

You know, those detours and crossroads, they lead to the Sea of Death, too.

 

I walked to the vending machine. Looked into it. Rogers, you clot!

 

I recognized the USB-drive. The very drive I brought from the ‘Lemurian Star’. Rogers had it stuck into the bubble-gum slot, right behind three ‘Hubba-bubba’s.

 

I ferreted in my pockets frantically. All of a sudden, loose change became a matter of life and death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pizdets - FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond Any Repair)


	2. Crossroads and detours. Sharon Carter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now it's time for Agent 13 to make her choice and place her bets.

“Captain Rogers.”

“Neighbor.”

He said it without any hint of emotion, nothing but his usual politeness. But somehow I felt humiliated and estranged. Several hours ago he was flirting, in a very awkward and also very charming manner, and I was all like “Wow, Sharon, wow, he noticed you, wow!” trying not to blush, because I was in love with him since I was five or so. And suddenly, out of nowhere – blast! blast! blast! – Fury was murdered and everything went down the drain. Every darn thing, my stillborn romance included.

My interrogation was short. I did nothing wrong (except agreeing to spy on the man I was in love with, but that was not a question). I guarded Fury and kept him alive until emergency came. I blew up my cover, but that was absolutely necessary and Pierce confirmed it.

Now I realized that it was an extremely bad idea from the very beginning. The best way to win Steven Rogers’ heart was to be honest with him. That chance I had blown up long before I blew up my cover.

But when Fury called me out and told that captain Rogers gave his consent to serve in the S.H.I.E.L.D and he needed someone to guard him undercover… That moment the idea seemed extremely good. Even lovely.

Of course, I kept my best poker face while inside I was jumping and squeaking like a little girl. I asked Fury what if Rogers fell for me. Fury smirked. “Well, that would be quite ironic. If you are OK with that, I am OK, too. It could make things even easier. Just don’t force it on him.”

I didn’t. I was a good girl. I waited patiently and my patience was rewarded… for several minutes.

God knows I wanted to resurrect Fury only to kill him again for getting himself murdered so stupidly.

It was most egoistic and foolish and totally unprofessional. But while all the S.H.I.E.L.D was on its head over Fury’s death, I was embarrassed and ashamed and lost because Steven Rogers was _polite_ to me.

Well, not the whole of me. Only the little girl inside me. The little girl that was fond of Aunt Peggy’s war tales and of comics and of books about Captain America. But that little girl was… very loud.

Of course I wore my best poker face. Everyone could see only an adult woman in a formal suit, a professional, composed and poised agent of the S.H.I.E.L.D. This woman completely understood the gravity of the situation. The very fact that I was interrogated by secretary Pierce himself was eloquent enough to understand that with Fury dead nobody trusts no one anymore. But I felt estranged. I was not invited to the investigation team, my mission with Rogers was finished, my final report to Pierce was done and I had pretty much nothing to do.

  
Of course I had no clearance on the World Security Council. I should leave as soon as possible after interrogation was over, and so I did. I stepped into the elevator and said “Floor twenty-six”.

  
There was nothing except endless offices there, and they were empty this early in the morning. I stood there only to catch a glimpse of Rogers when he descended to the Operations Control.

  
Most childish.  
Most foolish.  
And, as it turned out to be – most useful.

Rogers was not alone in the elevator. There was Rumlow there, and Rollins, and some other guys from the STRIKE, and some guys I didn’t know.

And when the elevator stopped on the 25th, they all fell on Rogers like a pack of rabid dogs.

At first, he had the upper hand. He placed his hits with remarkable strength and precision, and in three seconds three assailants were down. But there were seven more to go, and Rumlow managed to pin Rogers’ hand to the wall with a magnetic cuff, and Rollins socked him across the face win the edge of his own shield, and what started afterwards, cannot be covered even with such words as “brutal beating” or “battering”. He returned blows while he could, he sent two of them flying at the walls and the glass walls cracked, but Rollins used the shield and Rumlow went on with two taser rods, and soon their fists, kicks and electric jolts finished the job. They went on beating Rogers after he hung slack on that magnetic cuff, and when Rumlow released him and he fell to the floor, they kicked him violently, everyone had his turn on him, and then they hauled him out of the elevator.

That was beyond the pale. I stood there like poor Lot’s wife, unable to move, with my heart frozen to my spine, and thought: that cannot be. What I have just seen – that simply cannot be. In the heart of the Triskelion, in broad daylight, Captain America was beaten to bloody pulp and hauled somewhere…

I stood there, petrified, in the middle of my world falling apart, and the next moment it downed on me: Fury ordered me to protect Rogers.

Fury _ordered me to protect Steve, and he never cancelled his order_. And I had no other orders from Pierce. Or from anyone else, for that matter.

  
So, I knew what to do. The world regained its order, i’s dotted and t’s crossed. No way Rogers could betray the S.H.I.E.L.D. No way what Rumlow did was legitimate. Someone has answers and someone will give them to me, willingly or not.

I moved my boots to the detention center.

There was no way I could win where Rogers failed. Taking down a dozen of hard fighters was beyond my possibilities. But I could call Rumlow out, kick up some racket, raise a Cain, so to say. Rogers was popular among the Triskelion stuff. There was no wonder that Rumlow captured him in the isolated elevator on the empty floor early in the morning. He didn’t want people to ask questions.

Well, he missed two things: the lift, made of glass, and some foolishly enamored girl.

The detention center was in the square block behind the Triskelion tower. The elevator they hauled Rogers from was the shortest way there: to the ground floor and then – to the underground junction, and to the east from there preferably by the cart, because it’s over a kilometer.

But they wanted to do it secretly. This left them only one way: the cargo lift in the middle section of the block. Which would take them straight to the cargo bay below the ground floor.

I took another elevator on the opposite side of the block. God damn the architect of this building: three separate blocks, and the only way from one to another is either the main junction on the ground floor, or via the 50th floor where I had no clearance. Praise God I needed not to get to another block.

I was in the detention center in less than ten minutes.

Rogers was not there.

They didn’t lie to me, I knew it for sure. Captain America, beaten bloody, had to stir up some curiosity. The guys down below were not hiding anything, they just knew nothing. Their amazement was genuine: why would Captain America be brought there?

Damn.

I needed a minute. And a cup of coffee. And an enhanced brain.

Well, nobody required me, so I had all the time I wanted. And there was a coffee machine in the Operative center. As for the brain… I have to do my best with what I have.

They took Rogers for the interrogation, no doubt. They set their ambush nice and clean. This means they made preparations while Rogers was talking to Pierce. Pierce is behind this, and the only question is: does he suspect Rogers to be in a league with Fury’s murderers or is he in a league with them himself.

Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, ohfuck, ohfuck, ohfuck, ohfuck, ohfuck… If it is so, Rogers is as good as dead. Unless I did something.

Now I need a magic wand. And a flying broom. And a route…

If I were going to go Jack Bauer on somebody, where would I do it?

A shower. The spacious shower in the STRIKE compound, near the gym, just like our gym and our shower in the Op center on the 17th floor. These buildings were twins. The same floor-plan, the same communications.

But what if I am off track? I needed a confirmation.

The Op center was filling with people, everyone gossiping as a chattering girl. Somehow it became widely known that I was there when Fury was murdered. Suddenly I found myself in the limelight, and if I needed a perfect moment to rise a tide, to tell urbi et orbi that Captain America was taken prisoner right here, in the S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters, that was it.

But I said only: “Sorry guys, it’s classified”. I didn’t know whom to trust, I didn’t know whom they will support in this local Game of Thrones.

“Carter!” my chief called. “What are you doing here? I was told you have a day off.”  
“Oh, it’s OK. I can work, I am alright.”  
He frowned.  
“You had a shitty night. Get your ass off here, take a shower, have some rest. I’ll call when you are needed. Or shall I say it’s an order?”

So, I kinda knew which side he took. And I knew that if I step out of the Triskelion, I’ll have a huge problem getting back.

“Aye-aye, sir,” I smiled and left the room.

But I didn’t leave the Triskelion. I went down to the locker room, changed into a combat suit, placed my weapon and some devices everywhere I could and took an elevator to the lobby.

Down there, I crossed the lobby to the other block and tried to take the cargo lift.

It was blocked.

I took a regular elevator.

“Seventeen”.

“You have no clearance, agent Carter.”

I smiled. The STRIKE compound was not a restricted area – until now.

“Twenty-four,” said a guy from the IT unit, stepping in with a company of his colleagues going to work . Elevator skittered up. I rode with them and left the elevator along with them on the 24th. Calmly and busily, as if I had been at work, I got to the fire escape stairway and dialed the guy from the FBI I knew.

“Hi Osborn! Remember me?”

“Sharon? A gorgeous blonde from that weird S.H.I.E.L.D office? Nice to hear you! Howdy?”

“Oh, stop it. You must know what happened to Fury. Don’t play fool on me.”

“The entire city knows what happened to Fury! That car chase was a hell of a show! Sorry for him, by the way.”

“Thanks. I need your help.”

“What?”

“Have information for you. There may have been a treason against the State, and I don’t want to be a part of it. Can you take me out of here?”

“Sure. Neat and quiet.”

“I don’t need it quiet. I need it tumultuoso, forte fortissimo, with shields wavering and a massive quarrel over jurisdiction”.

There was silence on the other end.

“You know your word is not enough for the knockabout you're asking for? I’ll need evidence.”

“You will have it!”

“Alright. In an hour I am in your lobby, and you better don’t fuck with me.”

“Do I sound like I want to waste my career for a joke? Waiting for you. Bye.”

“Bye.”

I hid my phone in the pocket and went down to the 17th. My mouth suddenly went dry. Now I was about to throw myself at the deep end. And I was scared shitless.


	3. Dead ends. Steve Rogers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's where the announced violence begins. I warned you. And the suggestions about enhanced metabolism, I warned you about them too, right?

I hate modern architecture. Especially the way it displays framings, both inner and outer, so buildings look like skeletons clad in glass. Consider me an old fart, but I dislike seeing beams, rafters, anchor roosts and so on. Something must stay covered. And for God’s sake, it must not be used as a handy makeshift torture rack!

When I recovered my senses, I was stripped to the skin and hoisted by my wrists tied behind my back. They used a wire rope from some weight machine to string me up and another one to tie my feet to a disk weight. I was in the shower room of the STRIKE compound, so spacious, so well-lit, so practical… God, I hate modern architecture!

“Rise and shine, Cap!” – Rumlow directed the shower head at me. The water was freezing cold, I jerked and they laughed.

 It hurt surprisingly deeply. Not the pain in my twisted hands and battered body, I was used to the simple physical pain, however intense it was. But the fact that they were my mates – or so I thought. We fought side by side only three days ago, covering each others’ backs, we used to exercise in this very gym together, and wash ourselves in this very shower after, and chat, and joke, and laugh…  and now they hoisted me buck naked to a ceiling chevron, and laughed at me.

I couldn’t help feeling betrayed. Well, I knew we were not on perfect terms with Rumlow and Rollins. Rumlow was about to be promoted to the STRIKE commander when I rose from the dead and took his place. So, Rumlow was not happy and Rollins was his shadow. I didn’t like them either, I don’t like bullies and they certainly were the type. Some men go to the army, to the law enforcement or to the security services if only to beat people and get away with it. They can be useful, even good… unless you are not on the receiving end. And who was I to throw stones, a century old adrenaline addict? I don’t like hurting people, but I certainly like fighting. And while Rumlow and Rollins were at my command, while I was the one to control them, they would be kept in line, or so I thought. Stupid blind fool.

The other guys… we were not friends, I don’t easily make friends, but fellows and colleagues… Stupid, stupid and blind you were, Steven Rogers, and now it seems you are going to pay for this.

For a moment, I was five or so, in a dead end of a stinking alley, surrounded by the bigger boys who were going to have their fun at my cost. And there was no Bucky to protect me.

There was no Bucky, nowhere in this world.

You know the most effective way to shut the pain down?

A greater pain.

I raised my head and look them in the eye. I was a soldier. A professional. A man with a plan. I survived worse, long before these suckers became their mothers’ egg cells. I was going to fight my way out of here.

“Hi guys,” I licked some water from my lips and spat blood. “Where are Nolan, Kurtis and O’Brian?”

“You’ve knocked them out,” said Rumlow.

“For good?”

“No, they are alive.”

“Pity.”

So, three down, seven to go. No, more than seven, because they must have shut the whole compound which means the entire STRIKE unit is compromised, or at least this shift. How stupid you were, Rogers.

No, stop it. First survive, then plunge into self-criticism.

“Pity yourself,” snapped Rollins, playing with truncheon. He was angry. They all were angry and bruised, and eager for revenge, and my plan started to take shape. I didn’t like this plan from the very beginning, it was actually a half of a plan, it promised only a half of a chance and a lot of pain, but I couldn’t whip up something better, and they were going to beat the crap out of me anyway, so…

“Not a great plan,” I heard Stark’s voice in my head. I agreed. But I had no other option to buy him time.

“You know, where it goes, Cap,” said Rumlow. “We need the information Fury gave you.”

“My place was bugged. Pierce has already heard everything Fury said”.

“Pierce has nothing to do with this.”

I would believe him; I almost wanted to believe him. Had it been for Pierce, I would have been taken to the detention center for a proper interrogation, right?

But Pierce made a mistake. All that talk about getting hands dirty to build something better along with an attempt to place a classified intelligence sale on Fury had a rotten air to it. You cannot praise your best friend for his ruthlessness and in a single minute accuse him of treachery.

There was a chance that Pierce and Rumlow were pursuing the same target independently (and that meant I was toast), but I bet my life (literally) on them working as a team.

“Cut it, Rumlow. You’re a weasel, you would never act like this without your ass covered tight.”

He answered nothing to this. Only repeated his question:

“What Fury gave you? Why did he come to you?”

“He came because he knew whatever he gave to me would stay with me.”

Rumlow swallowed the bait.

“You know, Cap, I really like you are not going to crack just like this. It’s a kinda win-win game: you play hero, my guys play piñata, and I get my kicks”.

“What, you won’t take part? Never suspected you to be a watch-queen.”

Rumlow smiled.

“Lead me not into temptation, Cap. If I participate, I could knock you out too quick. You are playing for this, aren’t you?”

“Just can’t believe you don’t want to pay me with interest for busting your career.”

He laughed. They all laughed.

“My career? You could never get any close to busting my career. You could never get any close even to hindering it a bit. The only reason I really want to put a bullet in your mouth is that you are such a self-righteous sonuvabitch I could hardly stand you. But first you give us what Fury gave you. Let’s get to work, men!”

Well, that was bad. They were not particularly inventive, it was beating and only beating, with fists and truncheons and tazer rods, bruise on bruise, graze on graze, burn on burn.

Rumlow went away to the gym and turned on the music.

Did I mention I hate heavy metal?

They used to listen to it while exercising and I wouldn’t object, ‘cause, like, there must be a place for democracy even in spec ops unit. I listened to this… music for two years, training my patience along with my body, I got used to it, I learnt to distinguish one cries-and-drums band from another, and now I recognized the Megadeth with its album _The World Needs a Hero._ Was it Rumlow’s twisted sense of humor or did he just push a button and the disk already had been in the player? I couldn’t care less. The only thing I cared for was time.

And Rumlow gave me the tool to count it.

I knew there were 12 compositions on this album, about 5 minutes each, about an hour combined, and an hour was a hell lot of a time.

Because I knew they were in a hurry. The smartest way to get what Pierce wanted was to let me go, set gray men after me and benefit from my being a lousy spy. But they couldn’t afford wasting time, so Pierce let his dogs loose on me.

And they did… maybe, not their worst, but enough to make my body into a mutton chop. In the elevator they strove to knock me out as soon as possible. This time they tried to cause as much pain as possible without knocking me out. They went for shoulders, legs and buttocks, sometimes for private parts. Pain gathered and gathered, and somewhere in the middle of _1000 Times Goodbye_ I crushed under its weight. I drifted away.

They sounded surprised when I woke up, coughing blood and cold water ( _1000 Times Goodbye_ was still on, which was quite bad). They expected me to hold on longer, they had seen me in action, they knew me to be as hard as nails and now here I am, unconscious despite their efforts to keep me awake.

“What’s wrong with you, Cap? Hang on! We are not finished yet! Hey, aren’t you a fuckin’ Superman? Don’t give up so soon!”

Well, I am not the type to chatter about my tendo Achillis in a locker room. And if they couldn’t figure out what could possibly go wrong, I was certainly not the one to enlighten them.

My enhanced metabolism is no rose. Or, maybe, it is, but the one with some especially sharp thorns.

One of them is the increased oxygen demand. I burn oxygen twice faster than an average person. Nobody notices this, because oxygen is invisible and everywhere. But as soon as I get into a frowsty room, I feel like the proverbial canary in the mine. That’s why I ended up in the ice block: when I fought Schmidt, we breached the shell of the Valkirya, and - hello, explosive decompression. I tried to land the Valkirya, I really tried. I just fainted.

Rumlow was smart. He immobilized me effectively, hoisted this way I couldn’t do a thing to free myself or at least kick back. All my strength was for nothing, for I couldn’t find leverage. My ribcage was strained as Hawkeye’s bow at its full draw, and it was excruciating enough even without beating. Two fractured ribs made things no better. I could breathe only with short and shallow intakes, slowly and surely sliding down into sweet oblivion.

“Stay awake!” yelled Rollins. “Stay awake or I’ll cut your balls off, I swear!”

“C’mon,” I croaked. “I’ll bleed in a minute”.

 “That would be too easy,” Rumlow looked at me intensely with squinty eyes.  “Take him down, he is out of breath”.

Ramirez and De Marco heaved me a bit, then I heard a spring hook click and then I hit the tile floor, wet and cold.

It was almost bliss. The pain did not vanish, but diminished so noticeably, it felt like delight. So familiar.

I lay face down, eyes closed, and didn’t see, but heard and felt Rumlow squatted beside me.

“Why do you do this to yourself, Cap? You know it will only get harder. Tell us, and it will be over.” He touched my shoulder, his voice was soft, and his hand was warm, so different from the cold tile. It required an effort of will to suppress the surge of thankfulness and sympathy. To keep hating him.

Keep hating them.

Long ago… well, not long for me, only five years or so, they taught us, Howling Commandos, how to resist torture. Just in case. There would be the moment, they said, when your torturers would relieve your pain, would do something humane to you, like a glass of water or a cigarette or a sandwich. And that is the most dangerous moment, ‘cause we humans are social animals, and willy-nilly you would feel gratitude and urge to pay goodness back with goodness. This is almost a body reaction, you would want to believe that they would keep their promises and stop torturing you. “Good cop – bad cop” technique taken to the extreme. It’s effective. It works. So you would have to fight yourself, resist your animal need for warmth in the cold and painful world. You should remember they are the ones who inflicted that pain. You should hate them. Keep hating them.

I remembered Peggy taking notes seriously and solemnly. I remembered Colonel Phillips making a joke: “Whatever they do to you guys, at least they couldn’t make you pregnant”. I remembered the guys laughing. I remembered Bucky asking “What about Peg, sir? They could do it to her!” I remembered myself kicking him in the heel under the table.

I turned on my back to look Rumlow in the eye.

“Y’know Brock… I wonder… is there somewhere any tutorial, like “Evil torturer’s guidebook”? Or it’s an… oral tradition? Do you guys have… workshops? Discussion groups… powwows… where you pass the torch? ‘Cause you kinda haven’t changed since WWII.”

Again, I failed to piss him off.

“We haven’t changed since Ancient Rome,” he smiled. “I have two words for you, Cap: Hail HYDRA.”

Now, that hit the soft spot.

“Be patient,” said Natasha in my memory. “Pretend to be vulnerable. They will open up to you. They will tell you everything.”

Well, I needed not to play vulnerable. I felt like the world was kicked from under me.

“What, you have a living history club of Schmidt worshippers?” I breathed. “Rivkin… D’you really wear that fancy Nazi outfit? Do they take Jews on board these days? Latinos? Blacks? Bradley, what about blacks? Nazis are PC nowadays, too?”

“It has never been about the race,” said Rollins. “Schmidt used Hitler with his Nazi gibberish, that’s all.”

“Makes sense, he was not a team player. Y’know, your idol looked kinda… Freudian. With his red bald head and all…”

“He was a dickhead, you mean,” Rumlow laughed. “Yeah, you have a point. His successors did better. We did better, Cap. What a shame you won’t make it to see the new world.”

“Which you’ll make by tearing the old world down?” I quoted Pierce.

“Exactly.”

So, it was Pierce behind all of this. Great.

“Cap, do yourself a favor and give us what Fury gave you.”

I clenched my teeth.

There is one questionable merit I really do possess: I am stubborn. Stubborn as a whole herd of mules.

“Why? Because you ask so nicely? But _you don't ask_ _with respect_. _You don't offer friendship_.” I sighed. “Good grief. And they say I am behind the time…”

“It’s from the Godfather,” blurted de Marco. Rumlow rolled his eyes. He obviously had had enough. He took his taser rod and thrust it into my groin.

Dave Mustaine was not of much help to outcry me that moment. Thank God it didn't last long: the taser rod had discharged completely. Rumlow had really overused it recently.

“The USB stick,” said Rumlow. “Where is it?”

I hoped it was not in the vending machine anymore. I hoped Nat took it and gave it to the only person who could make sense of it.

“Piss off, Brock. I’m not giving it. I’m trading it.”

“The only thing you can trade it for is quick and comparatively painless death.”

“It’s not for you to decide. You are but a fist, Brock, and I am not talking to a fist. I want Pierce.”

“It’s for me to decide, you freak. Hang him back!”

So they did. Well, I managed to talk them almost to the _Warhorse._

I knew the second round would be harder. This time they used a 25 lb weight bar and scalding hot water. This time I cried so loudly they had to gag me with my own tactic glove.

 _Losing My Senses_ title turned out to be prophetic. And this time I was unconscious long enough to miss all the _Dread and the Fugitive Mind_.

Halfway back to the world I heard them quarreling over me.

“What the fuck is this?” said Ramirez. “Why he passes out all the time? I thought we could play with him, like, forever! He’s a supersoldier, isn’t he?”

“Dunno,” said Rumlow. “He must be pulling some trick.”

“It took almost an hour. People would ask questions, Brock. Pierce will have our guts for garters.”

“Shut up!”

I was on the floor again, aching all through, but the left leg was an overflowing source of agony. The last thing I remembered was Rollins hammering it with the weight bar.

That was really bad. That could ruin what was left of my plan.

“Hey, Rogers!” they turned me face up and sat me back against the wall. “Cap! Wakey-wakey! We need you!”

I tried to pretend to be way out, but they poked at my leg and I couldn’t help moaning.

“Flash drive, Rogers. Where is it? Tell us. Tell us, and it will be over!”

I tried to say something, but my lips were numb. Ramirez brought some water from the fridge. I drank as much as I could, then said:

“Pierce.”

“Fuck, no!” Rumlow grabbed at my leg below the knee and squeezed.

“PIIIIEEEERCE!” I yelled. And then I vomited all the water I had drunk straight onto him.

He was not happy.

“I’ll skin you! I swear I’ll skin you alive, bastard! I’ll shove this bar up your ass if you don’t tell me where it is, now!”

“No, Brock. You are short of time. And the next time I black out, I stay cold.”

“We’ll see.”

“No. You’ll see. I’ll be on my way to Mars,” I rested my head against the wall, trying to get what I could from the seconds without torture.

“You’re bluffing”.

“Nah. Thought you can do whatever with this enhanced body? Surprise.“

“What’s wrong with you? You were always so tough, why you suddenly became a lame duck?”

Because I haven’t had a morsel of food since yesterday afternoon, that’s why. But I didn’t tell him. I told the other half of the truth: “The more you thrash my body, the more it heals. Healing takes resources. It shuts down other functions. I go lethargic. You and your bulls caused enough damage to put me on a verge. Next time I hit the land of nod, I stay there. You can skin me, gut me, tap dance on my ass – I’ll be sleeping like a log.”

“You’re bluffing!” he squeezed my leg again.

“Come on!” I cried. “Go for it! Hit me! Hit me! Give me a break!”

He let go of me. He looked like he was about to have my heart for breakfast. Others looked almost panicked.

“You’re lying. I have seen you fighting while hurt. Everyone had,” said Rollins.

 “Well… I learned a trick or two during the war… I could muster my willpower to keep fighting. But to keep being tortured? Go spit, Jack.”

This time I was lying through my teeth, literally. Willpower cannot extort glycogen from the exhausted body. The real trick was to have chocolates, protein bars and glucose shots on me. I always had a little stock in my locker and some in my pockets. I prayed God for these bulls not to recollect that. Not to put two and two together.

And God heard me this time.

Rumlow reared himself up.

“Keep an eye on him,” he said. “I’ll have a ride up. And in case if you tried to play me, Rogers… I’ll go medieval on your ass when I return.”

“And what was that, the Renaissance?”

He left. Others moved to the gym and locker room, only De Marco remained to guard me.

I heard the cargo lift departed. My “half of the plan” almost worked. The other half… I was going to lure Pierce into untying me and then take him hostage. But with one leg broken it had become… complicated.

I pretended to be weaker than I was. Drooped my head. Behind my back, I was stretching my hands, restoring the blood circulation. I had not much time.

“Megadeth” ended. They needed not to drown my cries in the noise, at least for now, so they didn’t turn the music on, and I could hear something else except drum and bass. I heard them chatter in the locker room, debating about who would have my shield and how much it could cost, almost 12 lb of pure vibranium. I heard them watch the video of my torture on somebody’s cellphone. And I heard a very soft sound of someone crawling by the air duct.

Nat, was my first thought. My heart was already galloping, now it went off in a full throttle. The second thought was to distract De Marco and the others.

A moment or so I thought how to do it and then De Marco called to me:

“Hey Cap! Have you ever been fucked before?”

Every time you think one cannot be such an idiot, he proves you wrong. I couldn’t help chuckling.

“What, like now? Or like ‘fate worse than death’?”

“The second kind,” he grinned.

“Nah. Gonna help me with it?”

“Why not?”

“’Cause it takes balls, as far as I know. And you have none.”

“Let’s see,” he took a step towards me.

“Leave him alone, you perv!” shouted Rivkin. “The boss will be here in a minute!”

“It takes less than a minute.”

I shook my head.

“You’d make a foul lover, De Marco. Get off.”

“I will,” he smiled, approaching at me. “Believe me, I will.”

When he was a hop from me, I kicked the weight disk I was still attached to, with my good leg. That cost me a great deal of pain, but that was well worth it: the disk hit his shins hard, he dropped straight on me, and I met him with a headbutt  to his midriff. He fell beside me, and I managed to draw up, leaning on the wall, and then fell on him again, my butt into his chest. His ribs and sternum cracked, and that was a sweet music to me. I found his throat with my still inept fingers and squeezed hard. The others were already on me, with their fists and boots and truncheons, but then the other sweet music sounded: ‘thwack, thwack, thwack’ of a muffled gun.

Rollins and the others were down. De Marco was still moving under me. I broke his windpipe. He was already dead, just resisted the thought.

“Captain,” the girl pointed her gun at him. “May I?”

“Neighbor. Be my guest,” – I rolled from over him. He might not have deserved a coup de grace, but even a rabid dog should be put down quickly.

“It’s Sharon,” she uncuffed me and untied my legs.

“Nice to meet you, Sharon. Give me a shoulder. And thanks. What’s the plan?”

 She helped me up and we got into the locker room.

“Well, plan A was to barricade here and wait for the cavalry to come, but I heard Pierce is about to arrive, so we take him hostage.”

Great minds think alike.

I grabbed my shield and forced my locker open: there was no time to fiddle in the pockets of my suit.

“Are you really good at nursing? Or it was just a cover?”

She helped me to the bench.

“How bad it is? Besides the leg?”

I tossed her a 100 ml syringe and some ampoules of glucose, then limped to the common locker where we used to keep the Eastern martial arts stuff. I needed a shin guard to use it as a makeshift bonesplint.

“I am about to faint so you better make it straight to the vein.”

She was good.  She skillfully injected me while I was fixing my leg with a shin guard and elastic band. That was a mess and she tried to fix it but I stopped her.

“No time,” I grabbed my gun. “Let’s go.”

“Will you fight… a Spartan style?”

“Consider it a distraction.”

We burst out of the locker room – well, she burst, I limped – and took down the guards in the corridor. I heard the cargo lift coming. We aimed at the door.

Unlike passenger elevators, the cargo lift was totally opaque. So, Pierce couldn’t see us coming.

The problem was that we couldn’t see him coming, too.

He brought the guards. We hadn’t expected them to be so many, they hadn’t expected us at all. So it was a dead heat: they did not take us, we did not take Pierce. After a short fire-fight their lift moved up and we retreated to the locker room.

“Let’s return to plan A,” I said. “And I could use a hakama.”

We barricaded the door with lockers and she helped me into the hakama. We searched the dead… though they turned out to be alive, ‘cause Sharon used freezing bullets. Except De Marco, whom I killed. We gathered their weapons and locked them in the shower room.

“Well, what’s next? What about your cavalry?”

“On its way,” she produced her cellphone from her pocket and dialed the number. “Osborn? Where are you?”

“Stuck in the bottleneck on the Pennsylvania. Are you in a hurry?”

“Damn yeah! We are besieged here, me and Captain America! You wanted evidence, right? He is my evidence!”

“Well, my car is not one of your flying devices. I do what I can”.

“What, you cannot use your flasher?”

“I have no flasher. I am not a cop. Well, it moved, I will be there in ten minutes.”

I heard boots tramping and arms rattling on the stairway.

“Thank you for your help, Os. You can collect our dead bodies in ten minutes. And I mean it.”

She turned to me.

"Sorry, Captain."

I took Rollins’ cellphone and dialed the number I remembered well.

“Tony?”

“God bless you Rogers, you are alive!" Judging by the sound, he was flying. "Why is your phone dead?”

“Taken. Tony, listen. It’s HYDRA. They killed Fury…”

“Romanov told me, where are you?”

“Triskelion, the North-East building, floor seventeen. Tony…” my voice wavered. I was trembling with pain and exhaustion. “Rally everyone. All your congressmen and senators, all your friends in the army. All the king's men. Project “Insight” must be stopped. By all means.”

“Project what?”

“Three helicarriers you made your repulsor engines for! If I couldn’t make it…”

“Shut up! I’ll be there in a minute!”

“Shut yourself! There is the girl here, Sharon…” I turned to her to ask her second name.

“Captain Rogers!” said a loudspeaker. “Agent Carter. You have ten seconds to surrender. Or else we shall open fire”.

“Carter?” I asked.

“Grandniece”, she sighed.

“That was what I heard?” said Tony.

“Yeah.”

“Shit.”

“ONE.”

“Her name is Sharon Carter. Take her out of here. Protect her.”

“TWO”.

“I promise, but don’t you dare to die there! Wait for me!”

“I’ll do my best.”

“THREE”.

I heard that special sound of a mechanical ram digging into the floor.

I showed Sharon to the air vent from which she emerged. She shook her head.

Now the similarity was obvious. She was the same type of “English Rose” as Peggy.

“Go!” I said with my best commanding voice.

It doesn’t work on Carter women.

“FOUR!”

“You’ll be a hindrance. Go. I take the window. I did it before.”

I gave her a shoulder up.

“FIVE!”

“Are you going to do something heroically stupid or something stupidly heroic?” asked Tony.

Sharon disappeared in the air duct.

“Both,” I said. “Catch me if you can”.

“SIX.”

I limped to the window.

I never felt so bad since the day I had hit the Greenland ice. Before lethargy consumed me, I existed in the world of agony. I was unconscious and still in pain.

“SEVEN.”

Erskine’s experiment was second worst. It was something beyond pain or suffering. Something unthinkable. But I had hope there, and hope had born me through the ordeal. So, second worst.

This day should be the third. Or the first, if I kick the bucket.

“EIGHT”.

“You mean it? Seventeenth floor?”

My personal record of height I jumped from, on a solid ground, alive and whole, was ninety feet. Here were about a hundred to the lobby ceiling and about thirty after I go through it.

And my leg was already shattered. Bitch.

“NINE.”

“Wait for me.”

“Are you close?”

“See your ugly tower on the horizon.”

“TEN.”

“Not an option.”

 “ROGERS!”

The moment they rammed at the door, I plunged shield first into the window.

Well, that was as bad as I had presumed.

I lay on the lobby floor, covered with shards of glass, curled on my shield, trying to haul myself from the airless space of piercing pain wrenching bones out of me. It was past nine a. m. and the lobby was full of people, it was a miracle I killed nobody. People gathered around me, somebody tried to do something, most of them just stared.

“Please,” I moaned. “Please don’t let them take me…”

Natasha elbowed her way through the crowd and knelt beside me.

“It’s all right, Steve,” she said. “I won’t let them. I won’t. Just breathe. Breathe.”

“Nat,” I took her by the hand. I felt the world closing around like a dusty sack and tried not to succumb to darkness, but it was futile.

“Wake me up as soon as possible. ‘Tis important. Information.”

“Yes. Promise.”

There was something else to say, but the sack was almost closed on me.

I remembered.

“Nat… your interrogation method… It sucks.”


	4. Knowing my best interest. Tony Stark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iron Man himself finally steps in.

One thing I say for Rogers – he does everything on a noble scale. After he flew seventeen floors kamikaze-style and hit the ground with a bang, my arrival in my entire gold-and-red splendor was like “Oh, it’s just Iron Man, hello, Tony.” This bastard always steals the show.

The crowd around Rogers made way for me, I saw Natasha kneeling above him with his shield to cover them both and her gun ready. And I saw him.

Holy shit. He looked like a half-chewed steak. JARVIS scanned his vitals and said his life is not in an immediate danger… “At least from these wounds,” he specified, seeing the STRIKE goons pouring down into the lobby.

I turned to them and sent a warning repulsor blast under their feet, crushing the pavement and sending detritus at them.

I am no big fan of Rogers, but seeing him like that hit some particularly sensitive spots and stirred some particularly nasty personal memories. So my moods abruptly sled to - 40 F. 

“Gentlemen,” I said. “If any of you wants a pound of Captain Rogers’ flesh, he can step forth and we’ll settle the matter right now. Or you can go at me all at once, I see no difference. But I must warn you that we are live on YouTube, so if you want to take part in the show ‘Iron Man kicks asses’, you are welcome.”

“Mr. Stark!” a bespectacled bald guy stepped forth. I kinda knew him. Hardly did he want to fight with me over Rogers’ body, he looked more like a negotiator. “I pray you to calm down. I believe some kind of misunderstanding happened…”

“Misunderstanding? I wouldn’t call it so, Mr… Stainwell?”

“Sitwell,” he corrected.

“Whatever. It doesn’t look like any fucking misunderstanding; it looks like kidnapping and torture!”

“Sitwell,” Natasha said in a dangerously calm voice. “What happened?”

“Rumlow went loco,” said the man. “I didn’t know, I swear! Nobody knew, he just captured Rogers, shut down the STRIKE compound and nobody knew what he was doing!”

“And where is Rumlow now?”

“We negotiate for surrender.”

“The girl,” I remembered. “Agent Sharon Carter. Where is she? I need her here, safe in life and limb, now.”

“I… don’t know where she is,” said Sitwell.

“You better find out,” said someone behind my back. Two steps more and I saw him: a tall red guy with the FBI badge. “Agent Osborn Walsh, FBI. I am here to talk to Sharon Carter,” he looked at Rogers. “And I don’t like my witnesses battered. So, where is Ms. Carter?”

Sitwell looked abashed.

“We don’t know exactly. She must have taken cover…”

Clever girl.

The lobby was filling with cops, medics and everyone I could summon while on my way, all the king's horses and all the king’s men. I left Romanov to watch if they could put Humpty-Dumpty together again and started up to the 17th floor. On the way here I used a hole in the ceiling that was punched by Rogers, on the way up I punched my own, personal, straight above those goons’ heads, just to make a statement. I hope shards were sharp and that served them good, ‘cause one does not simply torture my friends, even if they are lousy friends who bounce around some Fuckistan on some fuckin’ missions while you need them here, because fucking Aldrich Killian ruins your house, kidnaps your girl and pumps her with nasty stuff that gives her superstrength and a really explosive temper.  And don’t forget the attempt on the President's life.

In sum: I was pissed.

What I saw up there, was nothing like surrender negotiations and everything like tearing the entire compound apart in the search for the girl. They were so busy that couldn’t even notice me until I busted the window inside and made quite a dynamic entry.

One of them, broad chest X-crossed by some harness, cried into his comset: “Gimme a minute and we’ll find the bitch!” I blasted him right into the crossing of the belts and he went somersault. “No, you won’t,” I said. I rather like Bond one-liners. Well, this one was not very Bond-ish, for I used non-lethal power, but still...

Long story short: when the SWAT came in, they only had to cuff the goons. I extracted Ms. Carter from the air vent and brought her down to agent Walsh. Rogers had already been taken by medics to the Howard University hospital.

“I don’t like it,” Natasha said. “Fury died there.”

“They have first-class trauma care, but they don’t work miracles,” said Walsh. “Lucky for us, Captain Rogers is a miracle. So, what happened?”

I was eager to listen to it, too. Natasha gave me only basics when she woke me up at an ungodly hour. Well, for the most of the people it is a rather godly hour, they are usually ready to leave their houses and go to work, but for me it was only three hours since I had hit the bed, so…

“Hill called me and said Fur had been shot,” said Natasha. “When I arrived to hospital, Rogers had already been there. He was there from the beginning. Fury died, Hill took the body to bury and… Rumlow took Rogers. He said they were summoning Rogers to the Triskelion.”

“Who they?”

“Don’t know. I only heard Rumlow say he was escorting Rogers to the SHIELD.”

“Pierce,” said Sharon Carter. “I met Captain Rogers at the Councilor Pierce’s office. It was him who summoned the captain. And twenty minutes later or so, I saw the STRIKE team arrest him. Well, that may be the wrong word, they beat him senseless and dragged him away.”

“What, right in the Pierce’s office?”

“In the elevator on the way down.”

“And how did you happen to be there?”

“I was waiting for Rogers to pass by,” she said without a wink, and the tone of her voice seemed so familiar… Oh, wait! Sharon Carter, but of course! I decided not to remind her of the times when I was a pimpled youngster and she was a toddler running in her best nothing around our swimming pool. Praise God we had a lot of home stuff, and it was Jarvis, not me, who took care of her when Aunt Peggy was on a visit. She grew up into a hell of a woman! Natasha still outshone her, but… just a little bit.

“I was on Fury’s orders to keep an eye on him,” she went on. “To protect him.”

“But Fury’s dead,” said Walsh.

“Still. No one called off the order.”

“So, you are Brienne of Tarth now,” Walsh smirked.

“Yes, she is. And I am Stark,” said I. “As soon as funny 'Game of Thrones' coincidences are noticed, don’t you want to have a word or two with Councilor Pierce?”

“I may,” he said. “But I’ll finish with you first. Sharon, you called me when you saw Rogers arrested?”

“When I knew he wasn’t brought to the detention center. So, it was not an arrest, it was a kidnapping.”

“But you told me of treachery against the State.”

“There may be one,” Natasha interfered. “The word has spread all over the Triskelion that Fury tried to sell some classified data to Russians and suddenly he cancelled the deal and Russians were not happy so they killed him.”

“Do you believe it?”

“Not in a slightest.”

“So, it’s only a gossip.”

“Or a smokescreen to divert the suspicion from the real rat,” I said. “It’s your job to find out.”

He sighed.

“We don’t know still if it’s our jurisdiction, or CIA, or NSA. By the way, Mr. Stark, how did you happen to be here?”

“I called him,” said Natasha. “When I found out that Rogers just vanished, I called our friend.”

So, she is my friend now. How nice.

“I will have a word or two with Mr. Pierce,” said agent Walsh. “And you don’t go anywhere.”

 “We are going to Howard University hospital,” I said. “Any objections?”

He looked at us and shrugged.

“I’ll find you.”

Natasha and Sharon took Rogers’ bike, I flew on my own. In the hospital I left Mark LVII in the operation ward, security mode assigned.

In addition to being bruised and grazed all over, Rogers had a compound fracture of the shin, some ribs cracked and a serious internal bleeding, which kinda stopped by itself, but not before he lost a pint or so. Medics said it would take a while to do that jigsaw puzzle of his leg, so I grabbed the girls and started for cafeteria. I would kill for a sandwich and knew for sure that there was something they both kept from the FBI guy.

“So, it runs in the family?” I asked Sharon.

“What, secret service?”

“This… and affection for Rogers.”

“I was doing my job.”

“Tony, cut it,” Natasha poked me in the ribs… and tossed something into my jeans pocket.

A flash drive. That’s what she was keeping from the FBI guy. And from Carter.

We had sandwiches and coffee and then Carter got up from the table.

“I’ll go upstairs and wait,” she said. “You have some things to talk about. Your… Avengers’ things. I will not interfere.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust her,” said Natasha when Sharon left. “But Fury was shot and Rogers was tortured because of this flash drive. I don’t want to get her into more trouble than she’s already in.”

“What’s on it?”

“A program I downloaded on the ‘Lemurian Star’, the SHIELD launch platform. It was hijacked by some George Batroc, an Algerian pirate. He took hostages, negotiated for a ransom, but… see, Fury sent the STRIKE to deal with the hostages problem, and he sent me with a particular mission: to steal the data. Nobody was supposed to know about this part, but… Rogers happened to. He caught me in flagrante delicto. And afterwards, he confronted Fury in his usual manner…”

I smiled. Fury was a piece of work, I wonder how Rogers could stand him for two years.

“And he stepped right into the cow pat.”

“Wasps nest, I would say.”

“What this program does?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I called you.”

“What, you need the nerd? Not the knight in the shining armor?”

“I need  both.”

“Well, I’ll feed it to JARVIS via Mark LVII, and we’ll see…”

“Wait. When I tried this drive on my laptop, the first thing it tried to do was to get online and set the alarm. All connections were shut off, so it failed. But as soon as you go online with it, they will know what, where and who.”

“Gotcha. I have to feed it to JARVIS myself.”

“Yes.”

“What about Rogers?”

“He’s not going anywhere, if I know anything about that kind of the fractures.”

“I mean… for now I am the only heavy unit we have.”

“Can you summon Rhodey?”

“Yeah, but he is a military man, he’s under orders… and he is in Nevada, as far as I know.”

“Try.”

“And until then?”

“We’ll manage somehow. You know me.”

“Yes,” I smirked. “I do.”

“Don’t take off your suit. Even in your tower. And I mean it.”

“Natasha!”

“I _mean_ it.”

When I made a move to leave, she added: “If you meet the man with the metal arm, shoot him on sight. Unleash everything you have on him.”

“Who is he?”

“An assassin. The most dangerous one. The one who killed Fury.”

“Aye-aye, ma’am. I’ll wear my armor and keep my weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one arm”.

She smiled.

“God speed you.”

“No, my repulsors speed me,” I answered. She smiled again.

So, I started back for the Big Apple. On the road I called Rhodey.

“Hi, Colonel! How’s’t goin’on?”

“Rather hot.”

“In Nevada?”

“Utah.”

“Wanna somewhere cooler? Like DC?”

“What happened, Tony?”

 I sighed.

“Shit happened, Rhodey. Fury is killed, Rogers was abducted and underwent a full course of Casino Royale treatment, and that was just the start. Something big is brewing.”

 “Mandarin-size big?”

“Maybe. Or bigger. Can you get to DC, ASAP?”

“Are you kidding me? ‘Am under orders, man!”

“I know. Can you manage a leave?”

“I don’t know, I am in the middle of pretty harsh training maneuvers.”

“Can you go AWOL?”

“You must be kidding!”

“I’m extremely serious.”

A sigh.

“I’ll see what I can do. Bye, have to deal with some annoying flak cannon.”

“Thank you.”

“Not at all, at least now. Bye!”

I heard distant shots before the connection interrupted. So, in about several hours we’ll have Rhodey. Not bad.

I am supersonic and very manoeuverable, so it takes less than an hour for me to cover the distance between DC and NY. I called some people I knew from the Senate and the Congress, asking them to pry into the SHIELD and to clarify what “Project Insight” is. They were politicians, so they answered “We’ll see what we can do”. It usually means “Sorry, we shall not move a finger until you show us our best interest”, but for now “RogersGate” was all over the news, because my live YouTube broadcast hit the top and went viral. JARVIS had already declined a hundred or so messages from the different journalists and independent bloggers. So I could be sure that my Congress-pals would move their asses.

“JARVIS,” I landed on the helipad. “Shut down all the outer connections. And no, I stay in my armor.”

I felt a bit foolish, normally I wouldn’t listen to Romanov, but as I said, seeing Rogers as if he had been performing in Mel Gibson’s movie turned my paranoid tendencies up to eleven. I've been there, done that, got an arc reactor into my chest. Better foolish than dead or beaten bloody.

I entered my sancta sanctorum and inserted the flash drive into a slot.

“Come on, babe. Open your heart…”

Of course, it wasn’t eager to open up. First, it could work only under the SHIELD’s specific OS. But hey, guess who had hacked the SHIELD two years ago? I had the emulator program. Second, the thing on the flash-drive started to unpack and immediately made an attempt to go online. Naaaaah. Not so simple.

“It’s an algorithm,” said JARVIS.

“I never mistook it for a cucumber,” I replied. “What algorithm? That is the question.”

“It tries to connect to the SHIELD’s satellite ‘Argus’”.

“Can we create an image of the satellite and slip it into its tiny brain?”

“I am working on it.”

While we were fiddling with the USB-drive, Romanov called.

“Medics are done with Rogers,” she said. “And as soon as he wakes up, feds will clutch hold on him.”

“You sound like it is something bad.”

“It depends. Rumlow takes everything on himself.”

I did the math.

“If Rumlow goes for a scapegoat, then Pierce can easily get away with it. Unless Rogers says something that couldn’t be brushed away as a torture-aftermath-lunacy… or I dig out something from this program.”

“Exactly. How far you are?”

“Halfway.”

There was a little of boast in it, but… a little.

“We need to get Rogers out of the hospital. As far as I know, you have a pretty well-equipped hospital ward in the Stark Tower.”

“It was supposed to be the Avengers’ Tower,” I said bitterly. “So yes, I equipped an entire floor as a hospital. Nothing to brag about, but Steven Strange wouldn’t be ashamed of working there.”

“Excellent. We’ll need a jet to transport Rogers there.”

“Alright,” I sighed. “JARVIS, can you finish it by yourself?”

“Of course, sir.”

“I’m on my way,” I said to Romanov.

Good thing was I had the jet, fully charged and ready, right on the helipad. Bad thing was I had no personal or company helipad in DC, so I had to fly to Ronald Reagan and settle the matter with them. We have a corporate landing facility there, but they are a bit nervous when I pilot (though I've stayed dry for three years already). I also hired a stretcher-equipped van in the company I usually hired limos from. They were surprised.

As soon as I finished landing and the dispatcher finished praying (though I've stayed dry for three years already), JARVIS called me.

“Sir, I cracked the algorithm. I am sorry for the delay, but I didn’t want to say it to you while you were airborne.”

“What is it?” I said.

“A targeting algorithm, sir. To choose, locate and kill people from above, according to… specifications. Sir… you meet the specifications. You are on the list. In the Top-100.”

“Not in the Top-10?”

“No. The first 70 are the states’ leaders. You are straight below Bill Gates.”

“Below him? Well, I’m… disappointed.”


	5. Cassandra’s truth. Natasha Romanova

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It turned out that revealing the bad guys' plans is not enough.

Despite Rogers asked to wake him up as soon as possible, I waited more than an hour after medics had finished with him. I needed time. Stark needed time. And Rogers needed time most of us all.

I am among the few who knows how his body really functions. I knew what’s hidden behind the façade of immeasurable strength and endurance. I almost saw his spleen, liver, marrow and glands working madly, producing hormones, blood cells and antibodies, blood carrying them to the damaged organs, tissues mending at a super-rate. He consumed wild amounts of energy, his subcutaneous fat was burned off, his eyes sank, cheekbones sharpened. His bruises became less swollen, but way richer in color. Sleep was necessary for healing.

I sent Sharon shopping and remained to guard Rogers. It’s not that I deluded myself that I could fight _him_ if _he_ comes for Rogers. But I was almost sure _he_ wouldn’t come.  Since I was told Rumlow was taking everything on himself, I knew Pierce would play “it's not me, and over there what you see is not my mare”. In these circumstances, Rogers’ murder could only worsen his state, and he knew it.

I guarded Rogers mostly against Walsh who was on the jump to interrogate him (yeah, they already decided that it would be the FBI jurisdiction). And I didn’t want Steve to be interrogated fresh from the surgery, either on drugs or in pain.

But I couldn’t delay forever. Sharon returned with a brand new backpack stuffed with all I ordered. I asked her to prepare the mix of dry protein, chocolate milk, two eggs and some sugar. While she was shaking a milk bottle to make decent carbohydrate-protein supplement (he needed quick carbs to stay conscious and a load of protein to mend), I produced two bags of ice from the backpack.

“Excuse me, Steve,” I said as if he could hear me. Funny. What was done to him… I had experienced worse.  I had done worse. But that moment I felt especially mean making him enter his personal room 101.

I pressed one bag of ice to his chest and the other to his face, covering the nose and mouth too.

“What are you…” started Sharon, but I interrupted her at once:

“Hush!”

I knew what I was doing, _mat yego za nogu._ I knew.

It took less than five seconds for Rogers to shudder violently and push me away with a roaring groan. He was weak, so I staggered but remained standing. Rogers threw away the ice bags, tried to sit up, failed and sank down on the bed-head, breathing heavily and hoarsely.

“I am sorry,” I said. “That was cruel.”

“That was what I asked for,” he gasped. “Thank you. How long…?”

“Four hours.”

“What happened?”

I gave him water. He was already on saline drip, but I saw he was terribly thirsty.

“Thanks.”

“FBI virtually occupied the Triskelion. They threw the book at every STRIKE member and at some higher org-men, Pierce is being interrogated right now,” – I raised the bed-head, helped him up as much as I could with his leg in traction.

“Good,” he emptied the bottle; it suddenly slipped from his fingers. “Bad. Sorry.”

 Sharon held the protein mix bottle for he could drink through the binder. He touched her hand.

“I have no words to express my gratitude,” he said. “And I’m sorry for my… improper behavior earlier…”

 _Bozhe moy_ , was he blushing?

“Oh, no,” she smiled. “That was… proper. I would do the same… Had I been in your position… actually, I was taught to.”

“Ahem…” though I was rather glad that Rogers crawled out of his shell and showed something more than knightly politeness to female person (especially that particular female person), we had a lot of trouble on us. “It’s not that good, actually. Rumlow volunteered for a scapegoat, so Pierce could be clean. ”

“No way,” said Rogers. “He is in, he’s up to his ears in this mess.”

“Tell it to agent Walsh”.

“I certainly will. Now?”

“If you can. He’s just behind this door.”

 “So invite him,” Rogers sipped at his cocktail.

First thing Walsh did was to try to get rid of me and Sharon.

 First thing Rogers did was to confront him about us. “They stay, or our talk is over”.

“Captain, we will discuss some classified subjects…”

“They both are SHIELD.”

“The SHIELD has been heavily compromised.”

“They are not. They stay, period.”

I couldn’t help noticing that before Walsh he pretended to be stronger than he actually was. He did it usually in combat, so neither enemies nor allies could have known his limits. The only kind of pretending he was good at, because it was subconscious, somewhere deep in his reflexes. Back in times of WWII, they wanted him to be the invulnerable, invincible Captain America, and he did his job so solemnly, it ate into his skin. Poor sod.

“What can you tell me about the ‘Project: Insight’?” asked Walsh. “How have you learned of it?”

“Nick Fury showed me,” said Rogers slowly, measuring every word. “Yesterday morning.”

“Showed you? Not just told?”

“Yes. He took me into the ‘Insight’ bay and showed me three helicarriers, newest generation, almost ready to launch.”

“As far as I know, you had no clearance.”

“Yep. He overrode it.”

“So, he committed a misdemeanor in office, straight in front of you?”

“I was sure he had an authority to do that.”

“No, he hadn’t. The only one to give a full clearance was Councilor Pierce.”

Rogers moved his head as if he was about to shake it but suddenly changed his mind.

“Why did he do that? In hindsight?”

“Sometimes he asked for my opinion. I always say what I think, maybe, that’s why.”

“What’s your opinion on ‘Project: Insight’?”

“It has to be stopped. No person and no organization may be invested with power of execution before trial.”

“So you said to Fury?”

“Exactly.”

“But that was not the reason why you came to him in the first place?”

“I came to him because we had been trespassing Indian sovereign waters on our mission, and I hadn’t known of it until we actually trespassed. I am not against black ops, but being treated like a mushroom really drives me mad.”

I bit my lip. Rogers was lying. Rogers. Was. Lying. In his special manner of not-telling-it-all, but still! He didn’t want Walsh to know about the USB-drive.

“So, you were mad at Fury that time?”

“Yeah.”

“And still he asked for your opinion.”

“Yeah.”

“And after that – where did you go?”

“Assisted living facility. To visit my good friend… My only wartime friend alive. Margaret Carter.”

I exchanged glances with Carter Jr. She nodded.

“And when did you return home?”

“About ten o’clock p. m. After dark”.

“Ten-fourteen,” said Carter, looking at her cell phone. “She called me just that time. “

“When we met at the corridor?” asked Rogers.

“Yes,” she turned to Walsh. “As I said, I was watching him undercover.”

Walsh rolled his eyes.

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you three separately, you know?”

“You already talked to me separately. And I told you the same: I’ve met him at the door, we talked laundry and coffee and then I said that he forgot to turn the music off and closed my door.”

“Have you seen or heard Captain Rogers entering his apartment?”

“No.”

“She couldn’t,” said Rogers. “I entered through the window by the fire escape ladder.”

“Why?”

“’Cause it was not me who turned on the music. Fury did it to warn me.”

“What music it was?”

" _It's Been A Long, Long Time_ ," Rogers frowned. Or, rather, moved his right eyebrow: the left one was stitched. “Does it matter?”

“Timing,” explained Walsh. “So, you entered your apartment through the window and found Fury there. What did he say?”

“He said his wife kicked him out. And typed on his cellphone: ‘SHIELD COMPROMISED’. He was wounded. Bleeding. I asked: ‘Who knows about you and your wife?’ He said: ‘Only my friends’. And typed: ‘JUST YOU AND ME.’ He rose from the armchair and I stepped forth to help him to the bed. And then he was shot. Three times, through the wall. He fell on my hands; I dragged him to the corridor. He said ‘Don’t trust anybody’ and fainted. Then she,” Rogers pointed at Sharon with his eyes “broke through the door. Said she’s Agent 13 and was on Fury’s orders to guard me. Called for help via her comset. I’ve noticed the shooter and went on pursuit.”

“I was told that you had thrashed an office center while pursuing.”

Rogers closed his eyes for a moment.

“Were they ensured?”

“Didn’t ask. What can you say about the shooter?”

“He is my peer. Just as fast, just as strong. Long dark hair, metal left arm. Red star on the shoulder.”

I felt my guts squeezing again.

“Kind of flamboyant,” said Walsh. “Screams ‘Russians!’”

“Yeah,” Rogers sounded acid. “Convenient. Russians are bad guys again, they invaded Ukraine, they could do anything. Screams ‘Fake!’ to me”

“So you don’t believe that Fury attempted to sell the classified data?”

“It’s total rubbish. Dig into the ‘Project: Insight’. Fury was killed because of this. He was killed by someone close, someone from the SHIELD, someone with enough power to summon fake policemen and a high-class assassin.”

“Do you suspect some particular person?”

“You already know. Alexander Pierce”.

“That is quite a serious statement. Do you have any proof?”

“It depends,” Rogers looked at something behind the window glass.

“On what?”

“On him,” I opened the window for Stark. “Welcome, dear friend Karlsson”.

Tony carefully made his way through the window and landed beside Rogers’ bed.

Walsh was hard to impress.

“Let me guess. He stays, too.”

“Exactly.”

Stark stepped out of his armor.

“Hi guys. Rogers, finally you look like your beloved flag, all stars and stripes. Very patriotic.”

“Missed you, too,” Rogers half-smiled.

“So,” said Walsh. “It’s Mr. Stark who has the necessary evidence?”

“It depends,” said Rogers with a good load of steel in his voice, “not on Mr. Stark, but on you, agent Walsh. Do you want to ask me some particular question?”

Walsh raked his hair with his hand.

“You know some of those guys were recording what they did to you on their cell phones?”

“Never underestimate human stupidity,” said Tony.

“They recorded how they were asking you about some USB drive. Was it Nick Fury who gave that drive to you, Captain Rogers?”

“Yes.”

“What was on it?”

“I don’t know, really.”

“You went through hell to keep it safe, not knowing what it contains?”

“Fury thought it is worth dying for. And hell is… a hell of a word. Auschwitz was hell. Dresden was. Hiroshima. What happened to me… it was just an occupational hazard. Is Pierce still interested in this drive?”

“He swears he knows nothing of it. And Rumlow swears it contains data Fury stole for Russians.”

“Bullshit,” Tony snapped. “It contains a targeting algorithm. Technically speaking, a thingie to aim at people via the satellite, shoot at them and kill on a wholesale scale.”

“How do you know it?”

“Oh, I kinda cracked it. I used to crack SHIELD software. It’s my… genius thing,” he produced the flash drive out of his pocket. “Cap? May I hand it to Agent Smith?”

“It’s Walsh and yes.”

“Oh, no,” said Carter. I understood her at once. Tony didn’t.

“What?”

“You’ve compromised the evidence,” said Walsh, taking the drive from Stark. “But thank you anyway.”

“What do you mean I compromised it? Hey, Walsh! How could I…”

“He means,” sighed Rogers, “that even if I swear as a witness that it’s that very flash drive Fury had given to me, no one could confirm that data on it remained the same.”

“Are you saying I just fucked up your heroic effort to save it from the bad guys?”

Rogers closed his eyes.

“No. It was already… screwed up. Because…”

“Because I have stolen it,” I interrupted. “And because Fury hijacked the ‘Lemurian Star’ to give me a chance to steal it. It was obtained illegally and couldn’t be taken as evidence in any court.”

“Good,” said Tony. “Because I wasn’t going to be overtaken by remorse anyway. Well, if it’s no use for Mr. Law, maybe I’ll just take it back?”

“No,” said Walsh. “It’s not evidence, but still the information. So, let me just step back and see the big picture. The SHIELD created ‘Project Insight’ to commit a mass murder, shooting thousands of people from those three helicarriers Fury showed you, Captain. Somehow he decided that shooting people just for lulz is not a great idea and hired pirates to hijack the SHIELD’s own sea launch platform so Ms. Romanov could steal the data while you, Captain, and Rumlow, were on a mission to save hostages. After having the data delivered to him, Fury consulted with Captain Rogers and changed his mind about shooting people from the aforementioned helicarriers. He was killed for that. They tried to kill him on the 15th Avenue and failed, and then they tracked him to Captain’s place, sent an assassin for him and succeeded. Before dying, Fury managed to pass the flash drive to Captain. Captain Rogers followed Nick Fury to the hospital. Ms. Romanov also was here, so I suppose she was the next link in a chain and she passed the device to Mr. Stark who cracked it and dismantled enemy’s evil plans while Captain Rogers was buying him time at a price of his flesh and blood and Ms. Carter rescued him. You know how this picture looks? Like total, complete hooey. Why should the SHIELD organize the mass murder?”

“Because it’s not the SHIELD!” – Rogers rose upon his elbows. “It’s the HYDRA! They told me themselves. They bragged about it. I don’t know how it happened, but I know it’s true. They are HYDRA.”

He fell on the pillow, gasping. Dropped the empty bottle. No one said a word. Tony facepalmed, Sharon picked the bottle, I touched Rogers’ head. He was feverish hot.

I almost heard what Walsh was thinking. Had I been in his boots, I would have thought the same. HYDRA. A Nazi occult and science division, almost a cult. Destroyed 70 years ago. Wiped away by Captain America, of all people. Poor man, he took more than he could stand. It’s not that he lies – he’s just delirious, he was tormented so badly he mixed up his torturers with his old enemy. Or they just said it to mock him and break him, and he took it at its face value.

At last Walsh broke the silence.

“HYDRA or not,” he said with that terrible compassionate tone, “they will answer for what they have done, sir. I promise.”

Rogers regained his self-control.

“No. They won’t, unless you believe me. But you won’t believe me, so at least remember that this flash drive is an unpinned grenade, and now you are the one carrying it. Good bye, agent Walsh. And good luck.”

Walsh swept his glance over us.

“You understand, ladies and gentlemen, that now you must not leave the city?”

“Yeah,” Stark was way past his usual sarcasm. “Don’t you want to cuff us to the cot? ‘Cause we are not leaving him.”

“It’s not necessary,” said Walsh. “For now. See you soon.”

And he left.

Rogers closed his eyes and let a moaning laugh out.

“ _No troyantsi ne poverili Cassandre…”_ I recited.

“ _A Troya, mozhet byt, stoyala b i ponyne…_ ” he finished.

He never stops to amaze me. I knew he spoke Russian, I recommended him books, but I never expected him to know Vysotsky’s songs by heart.

“You know guys,” said Tony, “when you hide behind the language barrier, you make people really, really awkward.”

“Sorry,” said Steve. “That means ‘Had Trojans believed Cassandra, Troy could have lasted for now.’”

“We don’t want to see DC fall, do we?” said Sharon.

“We don’t,” said Rogers. “So, let’s get out of here and destroy some wooden horses.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mat yego za nogu - screw his mother  
> Bozhe moi - oh my God


	6. Achilles’ Shield. Sharon Carter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HYDRA strikes back... in a very subtle manner

Had the others refused to believe what Rogers said about HYDRA, I would have supported him to the end. Not just because I was in love, but also because I was there. I’d heard those STRIKE jerks talking. Not the HYDRA confessions as such, but the tone, the wording, all the discourse said they were something. Not just a bunch of violence-high thugs. They were a fraternity, just like those ancient phratries. They had a purpose.

But I needed not to persuade Stark and Romanova. They were Avengers, after all.

And I… I remained Agent 13.

I produced some clothes from my backpack. Natasha pulled the intravenous catheter out of Rogers’ hand, we took off his hospital gown and helped him into an A-shirt. Stark made a wry face.

“That looks incredibly nasty,” he said. “Are you sure you are ready to go anywhere?”

“Doesn’t look like we have much choice,” said Rogers. “I feel like I set up a time bomb when Walsh walked out. And I don’t want it to go boom in a hospital, among thousands of non-combatants… What’s this? A kilt?”

“Yes,” I shrugged. “I thought it was a good… technical solution.”

What looked brilliant from the beginning, turned out rather awkward.

“Trousers are not an option, with this plaster and all,” said Romanov with a frown. Thanks. Ms. Romanov!

“Come on, Cap!” Stark sneered. “What was good enough for Mad Jack Churchill is good enough for you.”

“You didn’t known Mad Jack personally, did you?” Rogers looked very embarrassed.

“No, you are the only WWII vet here,” Stark openly rejoiced.

“He lived up to the 90-s,” I said. “You could have known him.”

“Missed that honor. Whoa,” Stark looked disappointed. “It’s modern. Not fair. Where is a sgian-dubh? A kilt hose? A sporran? Without a sporran it’s not a kilt, it’s but a skirt!”

“It’s a kilt,” Rogers yanked it out of my hands, wrapped himself in and buckled. “Because the last person who called it skirt was kilt.”

“That’s the spirit!” complimented Stark. “Now, let me take you bride-style into the wheelchair,” and he moved towards his armor.

“Bugger off, Stark.”

“Steve,” said Romanov, “do you know that your shin is fractured in twelve places? It’s not a proper time for the pride and prejudice.”

“Mr. Stark” the armor spoke so suddenly I almost jumped. “Councilor Pierce is giving a press-conference right now. Do you want to see it?”

“Of course I do!” – Stark fished a Starkphone out of his jeans pocket and turned it on.

“I am completely shocked,” said Pierce’s voice. Natasha, Stark and Rogers flocked together, head to head, to look into the small screen. I noticed the CNN logo in the corner and turned on the TV-set on the wall.

Pierce was confident, composed, concerned. Nothing like shocked, but at the same time slightly disturbed, almost upset, almost grieving. He said the words that had to be said by a high-rank official making amends for his underlings, with a proper tone.  
“…The crimes Brock Rumlow and his subordinates committed today were totally unexpected by anyone. Needless to say I didn’t give any orders like that.”

“But you did order to arrest Captain America?” asked some black woman.

“Yes. He lied to me. Lied straight to my face that Nicolas Fury told him and gave him nothing. I knew they were friends. I knew Nick Fury was there when Steven Rogers woke up. I knew they worked together during the Chitauri crisis…”

“Son of a bitch!” – panted Rogers.

“…So I ordered to restrain him and escort him to the detention center for a proper interrogation. I never expected that Rumlow’s personal issues with Rogers would turn out so ugly. So… outrageous.”

 “Do you think Captain Rogers was involved in this data selling affair?” asked a bulky white man.

“I really do believe that under no circumstances Steven Rogers could betray our country. He is an honest man, and honest men are easily deceived. As I said, Nick Fury was his friend.”

“You just said he tried to deceive you,” said a third journalist.

“That’s why he failed,” Pierce smiled. “As I said, honest.”

“I warned you,” said Natasha.

“Yeah,” Rogers lowered his head. “He practically warned me, too.”

“Pst!” – Stark listened intently and didn’t want to miss a word.

“I solemnly swear,” Pierce went on, looking straight into the camera, straight into our eyes, “that all excuses will be brought and all amends will be made to Captain Rogers, and the most harsh legislative penalty will be brought on his torturers, by me or my successor. Incidents like this will never happen again”.

A short wave of buzz went through the pack of journalists.

“Your successor?” asked a brown boy with dreadlocks. “Do you mean you resign?”

“Of course,” Pierce shrugged. “It’s a must. No state official can keep his post after a scandal like this. My best friend was killed while trying to sell state secrets to Russians. My order was violated by the sadistic psychopath. Who would keep his post after that? Who would want to? I’ll clean up the mess, and that’s it.”

“What did you do to prevent the mess from happening?” the black woman rose again. “You said Fury suddenly became a turncoat, you said Rumlow unexpectedly showed his true colors, but how could it be that you overlooked it altogether? Are you trying to say that you were as naïve as Captain Rogers?”

Pierce narrowed his eyes.

“Listen, madam. You have no idea what I am feeling now. Fury saved my daughter twenty years ago. You think it was easy to suspect him? It was easy to accept the truth? Do you think it’s fun to sit here and talk about the loss and betrayal of my best friend? Intelligence is a shady business, lady. It takes to shady methods. I hired Fury because he was good at those methods. He was tremendously good. Did I expect him to turn those methods against his country? To turn them against me? Never. That’s why I am responsible. That’s why I resign and will undergo whatever my country should deem necessary. But I want you to know that no punishment could be more painful than knowing that I was deceived by the one I trusted like myself. When you grieve for a friend and suddenly see him exposed, when you realize he was your enemy all the time… I wish you never to experience this, ma’am.”

He looked… genuine. His face grew weary, wrinkles deepened, jaw hardened as if he truly was trying to keep his inner pain at bay. I didn’t even imagine how Rogers felt, but I almost trembled with rage.

Intelligence is a shady business indeed. It is built upon deception, lies and betrayals, manipulations, backstabbing and backbiting. And, just as Rogers said, kidnapping, torture and murder is an occupational hazard. But there is a border one doesn’t cross. There is a limit even for hypocrisy. And Pierce surpassed it. 

I saw a glint is his eyes. Deep inside he was not just free of any mournung, he was gleeing. Savoring the moment, the irony of what he was saying. He knew we were watching him, he knew we were feeling powerless and diminished, and he was mocking us in a plain sight.

“But I am giving this press-conference not to share my feelings with public,” Pierce drew himself to his full length. “I am giving it to say what you would know anyway, in a day or two, but due to this… ‘Rogersgate’, as you have already named it, it leaked rather prematurely. The ‘Project: Insight’, ladies and gentlemen!”

 He waved his hand, and the white screen behind his back showed the images of three helicarriers. Again, a buzz went through the crowd of journalists like a wind through the grove. Pierce let them take their time to realize the scale, the power and the might.

“As I mentioned before, there were many things we hadn’t seen coming. We didn’t expect those aliens to pour down from the hole in the sky onto New York streets. We didn’t expect ancient gods to become real. We didn’t expect a magnate-scientist to fill the cities with explosive, mentally unstable people and to make an attempt on President…”

“This is a dig at me!” said Tony Stark. “I pissed off that bastard Aldrich Killian.”

Well, he was not at all against interruption, at least when he was the one interrupting.

“It just seems to me, or you are, like, proud of this?” asked Romanova.

Rogers gestured them to silence.

“But today,” Pierce went on, “We have a device to be the step before an enemy, whatever enemy would it be. We have the ‘Project: Insight’. These three helicarriers are quite impressive, I admit. But they are way more than just cannon power. They are the future. Insight is not cannons. It is the effort of an intellect, or, rather, the sum of intellectual efforts. A software that will see a threat before we see it.”

“No way he can sell it to the people,” whispered Rogers hoarsely. “No damned way!”

“I’d bet you a yard, but I’m already obscenely rich,” said Stark.

A tall blonde woman rose from her chair.

“Oh, it’s Christine, I know her!” shot Stark. “She… interviewed me.”

“Are you saying you can predict the future?” asked the blonde.

“Everyone can, Ms…” Pierce listened to his earpiece. “…Everhart. Coming here, you already knew what would happen: you would ask questions, I would answer them. What you didn’t know is what exactly I would say. But it’s not because of lack of prophetic gift. It’s because of lack of information. We have all information we need. The twenty-first century is a digital book. And now we know how to read it. Your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, social networks postings, phone calls, SAT scores… Our algorithm evaluates people's past to predict their future.”

“Big Brother will watch us everywhere, that’s what you say your ‘Insight’ is?”

“Attagirl!” uttered Stark. "See, I didn't sleep with anyone!"

“He already does, lady,” Pierce smiled. “It was only a matter of time for analytical teams of men and women to give way to something as effective as the ‘Insight’ algorithm.” 

“So,” she smiled, “can you predict my future?”

“Future is mutable, Ms. Everhart. I may say that within an hour you will receive a call from your old acquaintance, Mr. Tony Stark. He will offer you an exclusive interview with Steven Rogers, in exchange for a little favor. But, given that he certainly is watching us right now, he will either change his intention or you can say afterwards that it was I who gave him a cue. That’s how it goes with our future.”

“Crap!” blurted Tony Stark.

“If your algorithm really does what you say it does,” said Christine, “it is a really horrible instrument of terrific power. In the wrong hands…”

“Exactly, Ms. Everhart. That’s what Nick Fury tried to do: to put it in the wrong hands. Imagine Mr. Putin to have such a power. Or somebody worse.”

He shifted from heels to toes again, hands in his pockets.

“That’s why I pledged to terminate the ‘Project: Insight’.”

Once again journalists raised ruckus. Pierce silenced them with a gesture.

“It is not in my authority to cancel it. It’s an international project and many countries made their contribution. But the day after tomorrow the World Security Council members will arrive at the Washington and we’ll decide what to do with the ‘Insight’. My vote: cancel.”

“Christ!” said Rogers. He was flabbergasted.

“That’s it,” Pierce nodded to the cameras. “That’s all I wanted to say, ladies and gentlemen. Press-conference is over. Good bye!”

The news switched to the studio where two anchors started to discuss the matter. They couldn’t say anything new or interesting, so I turned the screen off.

Rogers sat in his bed, hands together, eyes closed, as if he was praying, forefingers pressed to his nose bridge and thumbs to his chin. He said nothing. And nothing. And nothing.

“Well,” said Stark at last. “We… kinda won? So we sound our victory cheer?”

“Nah”, exhaled Rogers. “He cut us around. He’s clever. He played ‘please don't throw me into the briar patch’ and everyone bought it, every darn one…”

“So what do we do? Will you give a… counter press-conference? Or will I? I am pretty good at this.”

Rogers opened his eyes and smiled.

“And what will I say? Or you? That HYDRA is alive and kicking and plotting to kill the President?”

“Not just the President: half of the Congress and the Senate and some foreign leaders, too.  And Bill Gates. Bill motherbleeping Gates! They put him on their killing list above me! I told him ‘Windows 8’ was shit, but I never expected someone to kill him for this!”

Rogers tilted his head a bit.

“I bet they have a nice psychiatric ward here. And I bet you’d make a good roommate for me.”

“Nix on that game!”

My cell phone signaled.

“Chief,” I said, sliding with a finger to answer.

“Carter!” he sounded disturbed. “Where the hell are you?”

“Having a day off.”

 “Don’t fuck with me! Are you still babysitting Rogers?”

“As I was ordered.”

“So I dismiss you. Return and report.”

I got off the phone. They looked at me.

“We need another piece of evidence,” I said.  “And I will return to the SHIELD for it”.

“Are you sure?” asked Rogers.

“Pretty much. Listen. There are things that only you Avengers can do. And there are things you cannot do. Like going to the SHIELD and playing their bureaucratic games. It is not for you.”

“She’s right,” said Romanova.

“She’s getting one thing totally wrong,” Rogers smiled to me. “Avengers are not some formal organization with established membership. It is rather a volunteer initiative…”

“He means – welcome on board, d’Artagnan,” said Stark.

I laughed. They didn’t really match the pattern. Well, same for me.

And what happened that moment was just like some kind of magic or chemistry: three different substances mingled, and then – puff! – a fourth substance emerged. They were the Avengers, Rogers was their leader. A minute ago we were just four people discussing some matters, and in a second they transformed into a headquarter planning an operation.

“What do I tell them?”

“Truth,” said Rogers. “I’m delirious. Babbling nonsense about the HYDRA. And so on.”

“And we can hardly stand him,” added Stark.

“Whatever you plan from now on, it’s not reasonable to plan it in my presence,” I said. “How do we stay connected?”

“The skypename’s born-unserscore-in-underscore-USSR,” said Romanova. “If you are busted, say hello. If you are OK, say hi.”

That made sense. Skype protocols are reliable. A Skype session cannot be traced like a phone call.

“We wait until six p. m.” said Rogers. “Then we go and drag you out of there.”

It would sound like an idle boast in anyone else’s mouth, but with Rogers I knew for sure that he would come, in kilt and with a plastered leg, on crutches or crawling, so I should better no’t make him to.

“You can take my bike,” Rogers added. “Well, I don’t know where the key is, but if you know how to wire it up… there will be no problems with any traffic jam.”

“I took it here,” said Natasha.

“Thanks but no,” I said. “I am not a biking type. I’ll take a bus.”

So, I took a bus and arrived to the Triskelion in half an hour. Of course, the bus couldn’t take me across the bridge to the Triskelion itself, so I paused before stepping onto the bridge. The river down below was the Potomac, not the Rubicon. Still, symbolic.

I didn’t know what waits ahead. It’s not that I expected to be killed right there, or arrested or arrested and then killed. But I knew for sure there were alligators in these quiet waters. There were plenty of them.

I thought of aunt Peggy. How she crossed the frontline and appeared in some French town, pretending to be a local woman, smiling at Germans, risking her life, for she alone could go there and bring back information. She alone could make way for the Howling Commandos.

I always wanted to be like her. I trained to be like her. But I never expected to do this in my own country.

I smiled and stepped onto the bridge.   


	7. Mass and majesty. Tony Stark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, it took me a while to finish it, but finally I did! Enjoy Tony Stark's point of view!

Finally, we were ready to get Rogers’ ass out of the hospital, but no, it wasn’t that simple, and not just because of the two FBI guards in front of the ward’s door, but also because of Dr. Fine’s strict position.

“What do you think taking him out?” he fell on me and Nat. “What do you think dressing up, Captain? You know your shin is…”

“Twelve times fractured, yes,” said Rogers.

“And you have done yourself no good while jumping on it.”

“On the contrary. I have done myself the biggest favor keeping myself alive. Sorry, doc. I know you worked hard on that limb, but unless you want the assassin who killed Nick Fury to finish the job, you must help me out.”

Doctor Fine was kind of wavering and then Natasha intervened.

“Those two guards are dead meat if he comes. Believe me, doctor. I know who killed Fury. Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last 50 years. Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out. But the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer so he shot him straight through me. Soviet slug. No rifling. Bye-bye, bikinis.”

She pulled her sweatshirt up, showing him the scar. Bullet wound, well cicatrized, darker than her pale skin, with a shade of mother-of-pearl in it.

“Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now,” I remarked. Natasha deigned me no answer. Not that I needed.

This brand new information made Rogers look at Nat from under his brow. He doesn’t like to be the ignorant one, our Cap.

“Wait here,” said doctor Fine after a pause. “I'll transfer you to the trauma care.”

And so he smuggled Rogers into the garage, blessed man. And even more, he gave Nat a ton of anesthetics, because Rogers burned them like a jet engine.

“Take care of him,” said the doctor to us.

“Don’t bother. We have a medical bay in the Tower,” I ensured him with a smile.

I took the position in the van’s rear compartment, near Rogers’ stretchers, Natasha took the driver’s seat. Mark LVII was soaring above the road, securing our way to Ronald Reagan.

“We don’t go to the Tower,” said Rogers when we left the hospital behind.

“What? Why?!”

“We need to stay in DC because the ‘Insight’ helicarriers are here”.

I rolled my eyes. I often do this when I talk to Rogers. Really, the guy is impossible. Five minutes with him and I’m torn apart between the urge to give him a manly hug and the itch to whack him over the head.

It’s not he’s a bad man. He’s a good man, as good as a man can be, for crying out loud! And that’s exactly the point. I don’t even mean he poisoned my childhood with him being kind of my dead perfect elder bro. It’s my father to blame for that. I mean when I am in his presence, I cannot even count to three without being involved in something heroically stupid. One minute I am in my tower, having a moment with Pepper and expecting some greater moments with her, next minute I am charging to the hole in the sky with a nuke atilt, because some dude in tights told me that I am not the guy to make the sacrifice play.

And you know, he was right. I fight for myself, mostly. I took down my share of bad guys, but in two of three cases it’s me to blame for them being this bad. If I hadn’t been such a jerk with Aldrich Killian… If I hadn’t trusted so blindly to Obadiah… OK, Vanko’s father is totally my father’s fuckup, I have nothing to do with it.  But the sins of our fathers… Well, I think there is nothing wrong with me fighting for myself. Even now – I can snap jokes about Bill Gates and his place on the murder list above me, but I really don’t want to be put on that murder list, written by some bastards who shamelessly use my technology at the same time! So, I am fighting for myself in this war. And so does Rogers, ‘cause he is on the killing list, too (number 420, ha-ha). Right? Wrong! He had thrown himself on the firing line before he even knew a nick about that USB-drive. Only because dying Fury gave it to him, and he even didn’t like Fury! And look at Nat, she’s always been a dodger, a shadow-runner, not the one to stand and fight openly. So was her mate Hawkeye. But in the days of Chitauri crisis they had known Rogers for how long, hour or two? – and look at them fighting in the streets like the freaking Spartans at the freaking Thermopilae! And look at her now!

Rogers does that to people. It’s not that he harangues you into something, though he can when he wants. No, he mostly just starts to do things, and all of a sudden you find yourself beside him, doing the same, however dangerous and crazy it is.

Bastard.

“Do you think to take those helicarriers down by yourself?”

“If it’s the only way.”

That’s what I meant! You cannot hear a sentence like this from a guy battered like a regimental drum and not respond with something like:

“Don’t be a dick. You know well that we are in this mess with you, up to our ears. The question is – if we can manage something less dangerous and more effective. Not necessary from here, I mean.”

“Your fellow buddies from the Senate are mostly here, aren’t they? So, if you want to outplay Pierce on this field, here is the place.”

“Steve,” said Nat. “You need a place to lay low and recover.”

“More reasons not to drag me to New York and find some place in DC.”

 “So,” Natasha concluded, “we need a place. And new wheels.”

“What’s wrong with these wheels?” I asked.

“Did you pay for them in cash or with a card?”

Shit.

“We need new wheels,” I agreed. “And how about the Stark corporative penthouse for a place to stay low?”

“The Winter Soldier will cut through your guards like a knife through butter,” said Nat.

“Don’t you say I am no match to him.”

“Maybe you are. But I bet he already knows of you. He will be prepared to meet Iron Man.”

“Penthouse will do for a while,” said Rogers. “Until Nat finds us new wheels.”

“Where after that? Some shitty motel? With that smashed face and that leg you will mingle just fine. Practically like a ninja.”

“I may know a guy,” said Rogers.

So, we headed to the Watergate West, where Stark Industries rented a penthouse (if only the twelfth floor can be called a penthouse). Rogers was mumbling something how we endanger the civilians, and Romanov had to remind him that hardly the Winter Soldier would attack now, in a broad daylight.

“By the way, aren’t you afraid to endanger that ‘guy’ of yours?” I asked.

“He’s military. At least, he was.”

My security guards might not have been a challenge to the mysterious Winter Soldier, but they successfully carried Rogers to the apartment. On Steve’s demand I gave a day off to them and everyone in the representative office. We didn’t expect the guest right now, but better safe than sorry. Or, in our case, better unsafe than sorry for innocent bystanders. Mark LVII was set in a guarding mode.

And all that time I was keeping an ear on my personal channel where JARVIS fed me with recent news. So when we settled in the apartment near Rogers’ sofa to have a decent meal (well, Rogers drew his superman milk, but me and Romanov had a decent meal) I was wide awake.

“So,” I said. “Rogersgate unrolls to an epic scale. We are on the brink of elections, so my fellow senators, as much as my non-fellow senators, have a huge quarrel over the ‘Insight’ and everyone wants to lay hand on it. Do you know Senator Stern? You don’t, lucky you. He calls for army control over the ‘Insight’. Other parties stand for CIA, NATO and straight governmental control.”

“That’s what Pierce played for,” said Rogers. “The project is 99,9 percent done. While they are quarreling, he will finish it and have his takeover.”

It’s not that I wanted to run away from the fight. I just… Well, I just hate Rogers’ being right. Even if we are on the same side.

“Let me play a devil’s advocate for a while. Why don’t you think it can be something more… subtle?”

“Does Fury’s murder look subtle to you?”

Well, that certainly wasn’t anything like subtle. But…

“They tried to blame Russians for it.”

“How long will that Russian legend survive when the FBI collects all the bodies and all the evidences?”

“Dunno. You tell me.”

“I tell you. When they failed to squeeze information out of me in an hour, they were afraid. They were so afraid Rumlow agreed to bring me Pierce. They wanted to sweep the litter under the rug as soon as possible.  Retrieve the drive and be done with me. But they wanted it clean for a while. Caught me in the lift, secretly, cleaned after themselves, brought me into the shower to torture… They certainly didn’t want to stir any buzz. If it wasn’t for Sharon… they could get away with it.”

“I wonder how they planned to dispose of the body,” said Romanov.

“That is the point. They chose a good place for the express interrogation but a bad place to take the body out. So I figured they didn’t plan to take it out, just cram into some locker. Only for a day or two. And then... Not subtle, Tony. Definitely not subtle.”

“So what do you reckon to do?”

“I am a bad thinker for now. If you can come up with something better than the diversion on those helicarriers, I’ll hear it, gladly”.

“Are you serious?”

“Do I look like I am in a good humor?”

“But… you are a master tactician, aren’t you? Would you trust a decision some poor egghead came up with?”

Natasha rolled her eyes and murmured something like “ _Nachalos v kolhoze utro_ ”.

“Hey, what did I say about that language barrier?”

“It means ‘Morning downed at the collective farm’. Must be some idiom…” Rogers tried to explain, when Natasha broke in:

“It’s the Russian counterpart for ‘here we go again’, Stark. Again you are bickering over nothing! Yes, we do want to know your opinion about our options. I am no big fan of taking helicarriers by storm, so let’s have a brain-storm while we can. Your brain is first-grade, put it to work! I know you can think remarkably sharply when you are cornered, and believe me we are cornered! If you don’t feel it, I’ll make you!”

Well, she can motivate a man when she wants.

I imagined them both… no, not quite dead, just out of the game, completely. I am alone against this entire plot, Pierce and his goons, no matter HYDRA or not. Just like in those rancid days of Mandarine’s attack, when I was all alone, even without Jarvis or Mark XLII, against the bunch of superpowered explosive motherfuckers. The only help I could get was from 11-year old shrimp Harley…

_“You're a mechanic, right? Why don't you just build something?”_

Well, I built the engines of those helicarriers. Damn good job, Tony. Weak points? They are Stark Industries made, they have no weak points. If you bang them with rockets heavily enough, they will fail, of course, but you’d better have some decent rockets for that.

Huh. Decent rockets. Where to find them? Eureka! Decent rockets, decent guns and decent bombs are on hand on the helicarriers! One just has to make them shoot at each other…

“JARVIS!” I took the access vizard from Mark LVII and put it on. “Give me the code!”

I plunged into the code.

JARVIS had the program disassembled hours ago, when we hacked into it the first time. And we suppressed all the aggressive subprograms that tried to hack us back or to destroy the algorithm. But that didn’t mean surprises had been played out. Some of them were hidden deeper in the code, and the moment I dug into the aiming analytic block, it started to melt straight before my eyes.

“No! Shit! Shit, shit, shit, Jarvis, keep it together!”

“I cannot, sir. The block runs multiplying fractal sequences that destroy it faster than I can block it. I am extremely sorry…”

The code turned into a meaningless mishmash quicker than I could grab the essentials. And finally the only phrase that remained was:

IF = MR. STARK

THEN = KISS MY ARSE.

 “Fuck!” – I took the vizard off and tossed it on the table. “The bastard that wrote it had outsmartassed me.”

“Please speak less obscene, more English,” asked Uriah Heep Rogers.

“Well, I tried to figure out how to make those helicarriers play the last one flying. But the one who wrote the aiming program was a cunning cock, he guessed I would try to break his code…”

“I wonder how he knew…” sang Nat.  “By the way, why do you think it’s… a cock?”

“Because he is cocky. The program block disintegrated. Putrefied.”

“We lost it for good?” asked Rogers.

“No, of course I have a backup. I’ll try once more. But first I have to think what exactly triggered the decomposition. After I have some coffee…”

I drank coffee, put the vizard on and tried again. And again. And again. And again…

Nat left for new wheels. JARVIS connected to the hotel security system and kept an eye on every entrance and exit. Rogers fell asleep. I didn’t notice how he zonked out, was too busy fighting that code. I noticed how he woke up, because he moaned as if someone pulled at his spinal cord and then yelled at me: “Turn that off!”

“What?” I was startled a bit and it took me some time to get that he means _Metallica_ I was listening via my headgear.

“That damned rumble you call music!”

Oh. His enhanced hearing.

For a moment I was about to tell him to get lost, but there was something in his face… I turned the music off.

“Come on, man! History of music hasn't ended on Sinatra. Move on with the time. _Metallica_ is almost classic, you know?”

I tried to discharge the tension, but failed epically.

“I know,” said Rogers in icy tone. “They listened to it while training. I move with the time, Tony. I can even tell this band from Anthrax or Slayer. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

I noticed his blue shirt gone wet with sweat. I noticed his skin was ghastly pale where it was not blue, black and violet. I noticed how he said “they”.

I did the math. Good grief.

“Was it Metallica?”

“Megadeth. _The World Needs a Hero._ Check the irony.”

“Gees! What will they do next? Vote for Trump?”

He smiled. The ice was broken. You’re welcome, Rogers!

“Can you help me to the bathroom? I’m afraid to go astray in this apartment.”

“But of course! Give me your hand, Braveheart.”

That reference he missed.

While he was out, JARVIS called me.

“Sir, I have found something you could consider interesting. The coordinates of the place this program was loaded to that flash drive. Actually, I have found it earlier, but the evaluation of priorities…”

“Just show me the place!”

JARVIS unrolled the US map over the terminal and enlarged the specified area.

New Jersey. A middle of nowhere. Some place called Camp Lehigh.

“What’s this?” I asked JARVIS.

“Training camp,” answered Rogers from behind. He was standing at the bathroom door, leaning at the door post with something nostalgic in his eyes.

“It’s where you were trained?”

“Yeah. It belonged to the SNR then. Must be SHIELD’s now.”

“Let’s go and make a visit?”

Rogers frowned at me. Or, rather, half-frowned, his left brow motionless, swollen and stitched.

“You are not going alone.”

And who will stop me, I thought. You and what army?

“Believe me, you don’t want me to fly you there on my back.”

“I don’t. We take your jet and fly together, all four of us.”

“It’s a bad, bad idea! All the eggs in one basket are very easy to break.”

“Don’t make me fall back upon the fascia metaphor. Really, Tony, you are our only heavy-weighter, and this smells like a mousetrap.”

“That’s why _I_ must go there! I am the iron mouse that breaks the trap.”

He limped to the sofa, sank on it with a muffled moan.

“I am not leaving you alone,” I said. “Of course, we wait for Nat and Sharon. And, besides, I am not the only heavy-weighter.”

I called Rhodey.

“Howdy, old boy? When are we to expect you?”

“Tony! Er… What do you mean “when”? I saw the news. Aren’t you all OK there?”

“We are not OK!” hollered Rogers. “We are hundred miles from OK!”

I turned the video mode on so Rhodey could see Rogers.

“Hello, Ste… Great God! I’m sorry, I… I heard what they did to you, but…”

And it was only 10% of what I saw!

“Doesn’t matter! Cut it, Rhodey. Just cut it. We need you. Nothing is over. They are still up to country takeover, and…”

Well, in video mode Rogers could see Rhodey, too. His expression.

“What did they tell you?” he asked.

“That you’ve… endured too much.”

“Went cuckoo”?

 “Rather paranoid, which is… quite understandable. That you think you are back in the days of WWII. You think your tormentors are HYDRA…”

Rogers closed his eyes and threw his head at the back of the sofa.

“HYDRA or not, they are bad, bad piece of work,” I hastily said. “And they are up to no good.”

“Aren’t they arrested?”

“Yeah, the small fry! The others are free, and the guy that shot Fury is running loose somewhere around, and with Rogers has been through a shredder I am the only tank in the party. We need you, man!”

“Listen, Tony, I believe you! And I asked for a leave. They didn’t let me. They are sure everything is settled.”

“And what do you think?”

He frowned.

“Even if they let me, they would certainly order me to leave the War Machine in the bay.”

“So don’t  ask for a permission! It’s easier to ask for pardon when it’s all over and you are a hero.”

“Cut it, Tony,” Rogers exhaled. “We cannot ask him to ruin his life and career.”

That was the one of that moments you desperately want to whack Cap over his stubborn thick head in a phantasm of hope to peg some sense in it.

“Of course we fucking can!” I roared. “Look at you! You have no uninjured place on you to cover with a matchbox! Leg shattered! Ribs banged! A gazillion microfractures everywhere!”

“They healed already,” he murmured, glistening with perspiration. “I’ll get better. I’m already better…”

“Yeah, you can make it into the bathroom without fainting halfway! Aren’t you a champ!”

“Tony…”

“Shut your trap, Rogers! Rhodey , don’t listen to him. Just look at him. And listen to me. I am not paranoid and certainly not tortured into delirium, and when I say we are drowning in heavy shit, we really are!”

“I’ll… try to get to General Doyle…”

“Don’t try! Do! Or do not!”

Rogers interrupted again.

“Tony, don’t. Just don’t. You spent so many time around military men, and still don’t know a bloody thing about them. Army is not a bunch of guys running around shooting guns. It’s order and obedience. Discipline. A military air force officer cannot go AWOL just because his friend asked him to.”

“Look who’s talking!” I snapped.

“If you mean the Azzano incident, I would remind you that no one asked me to go AWOL and save the prisoners. I had nobody to answer to. Was tired of being a propaganda parrot. Hated myself for it. Had no wife, no kids, no friends. Nothing to lose. Unlike Colonel Rhodes. So, if you really consider yourself his friend, just let him be. Goodbye, Colonel, sir. JARVIS, disconnect.”

And you know what? This stupid AI of mine obeyed Rogers!  

“What the fuck was that? Did you just dash away our only backup?”

“No,” Rogers closed his eyes. “I just manipulated him into coming.”

I stood thunderbolted. The words “Rogers” and “Manipulated” suited each other like “Water” and “Burned”.

But, on the other hand, what did I really know about him? I never bothered to look behind the scenes. The man was the plague of my childhood, so why should I? I preferred to think of him like of a dumb muscle, guided by General Philips and Aunt Peggie. Of course, I was told (repeatedly) that he was intelligent and rather educated. When the Howling Commandos would gather and war tales would be told, they never missed the one about how Rogers studied German, and when he mastered basics, he started to read books, and of all books in some ravaged library he picked Xenophon’s ‘Anabasis’ and tormented them with parallels. Do I need to say that since then I hated Xenophon’s guts and would never touch ‘Anabasis’ with a stick?

The thing is – I deluded myself almost consciously. I knew Rogers was intelligent and smart – I just ignored the knowledge and went on with thinking of him as dumb. Brave, bold, selfless? In my vocabulary, still dumb.

And then he appeared in flesh, fresh from the ice. Gees, he was pathetic. “I’ve got that reference!” my ass. Of course he was out of his time, all alone in this drastically changed world, forced to catch up with 66 years and deal with the fact that everyone he knew is dead and the woman he loved is losing her final battle with Alzheimer's. But I gave him no mercy. “Dumb” was my verdict to him and everything he did. Yeah, I can be a dick when I want to. And when I don’t want to. Honestly, I am a dick 90% of time and I save all my non-dickishness for Pepper and Rhodey. Well, mostly for Pepper, Rhodey lives on leftovers.

So, where were we? Oh, yeah, Rogers and his manipulations. See, when Chitauri descended on us from the portal, I had to stop that self-deluding bullshit. I gave Rogers that he was smart, a swift learner, a quick thinker and a master tactician. Of course it was I who delivered the final blow to the alien forces (and suffered massive PTSD afterwards), but I have to admit: hadn’t the World Council been so cowardly stupid, it would have been Rogers who won the battle. In an hour, he made chaos into the battle order. The police and National Guard were eating from his hand. But I never, ever thought of him as of manipulator. With all his honesty and pride he was as sophisticated as a wooden plank, wasn’t he?  
Well, one more delusion to say goodbye to.

“Cap, may I ask you a rather personal question?”

“Go.”

“When I invited you to stay in New York and lead the Avengers, why did you refuse? Why did you join Fury’s flying circus instead?”

“Want me to be honest?”

“Of fuckin’ course!”

“You clearly let me see you didn’t like me. After the Battle of New York your attitude changed a bit, but I already had been told of the reasons you didn’t like me, and I respected them enough to step aside. Nat and Clint were free of that background, so I decided to work with them.”

“It doesn’t look like you are Fury’s admirer.”

“No. But I don’t need to be. He’s not my friend’s child. I may dislike him as much as I want, we still get along on the professional ground…”

“So, you dislike me, too?”

“No, Tony. I feel… rather awkward in your presence. You resemble Howard very much. And I know you don’t like this resemblance and fought hard to be more than Howard’s son, to make a name for yourself. But you see, there is nothing I can do with feeling that I see Howard reincarnate when I look at you.”

“Maybe, you should look better? I mean, the SHIELD obviously went down the drain. And you need a place you belong to.”

“Stark Tower?”

“Why not? My disliking you had reduced strikingly. It won’t be a problem anymore. And the Avengers… Just look around! Can you trust the government, the World Council, the Senate or the Congress anymore? Can we trust anyone beside ourselves? I have a point, admit it.”

He wavered.

“Come on! After all of this do you really think you could return to the SHIELD and work with them as if nothing happened?”

“No. You may have a point. But let’s talk about it later. Win first, then discuss future plans. As Morita used to say: ‘Ashita no koto wo hanasu to oni ga warau’. When people talk of tomorrow, demons laugh.”

“Well,” I shrugged. “I am not afraid of making demons laugh.”

“Ms Romanov an Ms Carter are entering the elevator,” said JARVIS.

 I saw Rogers heave a sigh of relief.

“Carter girl. Do you like her?”

“Of course I do! I like everything about her. I like the ground under her feet. She saved my sorry ass. She bought me the kilt. Wouldn’t you like her in my place?”

“Oh, for crying out loud, Rogers, it’s not gratitude I’m talking about!”

 “I’m too thrashed for anything else,” he said evenly, but I noticed his ears went pink.

Well, girls were OK, though Sharon’s intelligence mission failed.

“They kicked me out,” she said, devouring Thai noodles. “But that’s not the most interesting part. They kicked out Maria Hill.”

“What?” Rogers raised his brow.

“What I say exactly. Just before they rinsed me. Sitwell never bothered even to do it in private. He asked her in front of all operative center what she’s going to do. She said she’s preparing Fury’s funeral. Then Sitwell said her to go to New York and stay there until she is called to trial.”

“Trial?” Rogers clenched his fists.

“Yeah. He made it plain that she is the suspect in Fury’s case.”

“Sitwell was on the ‘Lemurian Star’,” said Romanov.

“And he was the first to meet me in the hall,” I added. “I mean, he was leading the STRIKE team to claim Rogers’ mostly alive body and retrieve it… to the torture chamber, I suppose. How has he happened to be still in charge, not in the one of the FBI’s cozy interrogation rooms?”

“An intriguing question,” said Sharon. “I have an answer, but I don’t like it.”

“The FBI is compromised, too,” said Rogers grimly. “The army. Maybe, the Senate and the Congress. And who knows what else. Tell about yourself, Sharon.”

“Oh, nothing to tell. After they finished with Hill, they came at me. I had been a bad, bad girl when I told nobody about how Steven Rogers was arrested and what I did to get him out. I acted over my superiors’ heads. I disobeyed. I ratted us out to the FBI. Chief Robertson was on fire. Almost literally. They took my weapon and my badge and saw me to the entrance door.”

“Yes, torturing Captain America is kinda bad publicity,” I said.

“No, being caught red-handed is,” corrected Romanov quite cynically.

“What about the ‘Insight’?” asked Rogers.

“Well, it’s not classified anymore, so people openly discuss who will have it: the Army, the Air Force or the NATO. Work never stopped. On the contrary, they are hurrying”.

Rogers plunged deep into facepalm.

“Nice job, hero,” I grinned. “Stop beating yourself up, you have me to do it.”

“What about you?” asked Romanov. “Any success with that algorithm?”

“No and yes,” I said. And told them about the Camp Lehigh in New Jersey.

“Now, I can leave Cap in your capable hands and have a chit-chat with the creator of the algorithm.”

Romanov held her hand out.

“Keys to the jet,” she said.

I sighed.

“I knew it will come to that. Why you cannot just sit and wait for a while?”

“Because you will need backup.”

Strange thing, I could easily pull wigs with Rogers, but Romanov somehow made me lose every will to bicker with her.

“There is no key. JARVIS opens it for me. Or anyone I order him to.

“JARVIS?” Romanov purred with her sweetest voice.

“JARVIS, I grant access to Captain Rogers, Agent Romanov and Agent Carter.”

“Access granted, sir.  Though, you have granted it to Captain Rogers and Ms Romanov two years and fourteen days ago.”

Shit. I have forgotten.

“How nice of you,” smiled Romanov. “Thank you, Tony.”

“You are always welcome,” I grumbled. “And now, Ms Carter, you are welcome too.”

So, we started to Ronald Reagan. Romanov was driving, I was covering them from above. So much for the new wheels and secrecy. 

They boarded the jet and headed North-East, I flew on my own.

“Rogers, this is the last chance for you to partake of my hospitalities. Stark Tower would make a perfect command center. You will have JARVIS at your service…”

“Thanks, but no.  It’s XXI century, I can have my command center everywhere, and I prefer to be close to you.”

Natasha laughed in my headpiece.

Shit.

When we arrived to the destination point, the sun was sitting on the tree top and sliding lazily down the trunk. The Camp Lehigh looked totally abandoned.

The jet landed on the parking lot. I landed beside.

Rogers limped out of the jet, leaning on the crutch. Looked around, eyes narrowed. He saw exactly what I saw: cracked concrete with grass exploded from beneath, young trees here and there where they shouldn’t grow, rusty barbed wire, a layer of fallen leaves covering the race-courses, washed out signs... Everything looked pretty neglected to a human eye.

But I could see not with my eyes only. Mark LVII sensors visualized the electromagnetic fields for me, and I could see a clear stream of light running to…

“That bunker,” – Rogers showed with his finger at the building about 60 yards from us. “Army regulations forbid storing munitions within 500 yards of the barracks. That building is in the wrong place.”

“Bingo, Cap,” well, I was aggravated, but only a bit. “This building is powered.”

“How I cannot see it?” Romanov stared intensely at her Starkphone Special.

“Because the cable is protected by a Faraday’s cage,” I explained. “But due to the skin effect and my powerful sensors I can detect it. Your sensors are much weaker, given that I have an arc reactor and you have just a lousy battery.”

I covered the distance in one jump, blasted the lock away and opened the door ajar.

“Stark!” called Rogers. I paused at the door.

Despite my suggestions, he didn’t try to keep up. Just said via his headpiece:

“Natasha goes with you. Sharon and I stay here and keep the fort.”

“Okay” – I waited for Romanov. Not that I really needed backup, but another round of bickering with Rogers seemed not so amusing and a company is a company.

Natasha caught up and we stepped together into the darkness.

“Natasha, status,” said Rogers.

“Dark,” she said. “Dusty. And we are the only moving and warm objects here.”

“Not even rats?”

“Nothing.”

“Then you are not alone.”

We descended the stairs and I found a switch. Trembling deadly pale lamps diluted the darkness, making it… well, a darkness you can read in. We were in a long hall, square columns and desks lined up in rows, covered with dust and cobwebs, a dull bureaucratic dystopia.

On the opposite wall the SHIELD crest was painted: an eagle inscribed into a circle.

“Status,” Rogers insisted.

“It’s OK, mom,” I said. “There are a plenty of desks and bureaus in this God forsaken facility, and the only danger is to be bored to death.”

“This is some SHIELD institution,” Natasha added. “Everything looks like the sixties.”

 “It’s when the Beatles were on top and everyone smoked weed,” I pointed.

“The New Wave cinema, the Carribbean crisis and first space flights,” said Rogers. “I did my homework. What do you see?”

“The door. And another boring hall with a lot of cabinets and empty shelves.”

“And a portrait on the wall,” added Romanov. “Wow, Tony’s his father’s copy, I recognized Howard at once. Who’s the girl?’

I stopped before Aunt Peggy’s picture and turned on video transmission for Rogers to see it. But he didn’t want to enlighten Nat.

 I wondered how she didn’t recognize the legendary SHIELD’s co-founder, but then remembered that she joined the SHIELD long after Peggy resigned, and if there were some pictures of Margaret Carter in the Triskelion, she must be a seasoned matron on them. So I said nothing, too.

“A draught” said Romanov and approached yet another empty shelve. Well. That’s where not-wearing an armour turned out to be helpful.

I scanned the wall with ultrasound.

“Right you are, there is an empty space behind this wall. But no door.”

I grabbed at the shelf and applied some force. That’s where wearing an armour turned out to be helpful.

“If you're already working in a secret office, why do you need to hide the elevator?” asked Rogers, watching the sliding door of the lift with my vizor’s eyes.

“Good question, kiddo,” I tried the button panel. “It is moved by code. Will take a little time to break…”

“Let me,” Romanov lighted the panel with UV, and tadaaa! – some buttons showed up to be way more fingered than others. Ok, only four digits, no repetition, 210 combinations, not a challenge for Jarvis at all. Three seconds, and the door was opened.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“What?”

“Faraday’s cage again, Cap. Elevator shaft is enclosed with it. Once we step into this cabin, we lose connection with you.”

Rogers paused.

“We wait for 30 minutes. Then we enter.”

“May I suggest, Captain, that the retreat to the Stark Tower and search for help would be a more sensible strategy?”

“You may suggest, JARVIS,” I heard Rogers smiling.

“May I suggest, Mr. Stark…” JARVIS began.

“Yes, you may. Half an hour, Cap!” – I pressed the “down” button.

Down, down, down in Goblin town… I felt a bit worried. Well, almost scared. My Afghanistan adventures gave me some problems with caves and dungeons.   

Natasha looked at me. We were on our own, all the connections severed, and the trip down seemed somehow… long.

The lift stopped, it’s doors opened to complete darkness. I turn the lighters on. Their beams shone ten feet ahead and then they were drowned in pitch black. Our steps raised the dust that amassed here by decades, and it swirled like a blizzard in the light.

There must have been some motion sensors here – while we were looking around in search for a switch, ancient mercury lamps on the ceiling quickened with a buzz, and the spacious dungeon was flooded with the same deadly pale not-quite-darkness.

There were no desks, cabinets and shelves here. Only computers. Ancient. Not Cap-ancient, not Colossus or ENIAC, but UNIVAC 1108? Wow! And more wows to ILLIACs IV lined along the wall. And, of course, a bunch of STARK SMARTs.

But I still couldn’t believe that the aiming algorithm was written here.

“This place gives me creeps,” said Romanov. “It looks like Vault 15 in Fallout 2. Almost expect a crazy old man with a flamethrower. Or a feral ghoul. Or a bunch of them.”

“You had to say this!” I snapped. The place gave me creeps, too, and now I knew the reason.

 “Feral ghoulsfirst appeared in Fallout 3,” I said just to say something.

“This can't be the data point. This technology is ancient,” Natasha stepped forth and saw something that made her eyes go wide.

I followed her and saw the adapter. Quite a modern adapter, with several USB slots on it.

I produced a USB cable from my right glove and stuck it into the slot.

The ancient tech came to life. With blinking of lamps and clicking of switches it woke up, magnetic tapes started their reel, a surveillance camera turned its eye to us, and on a dusty black screen green letters emerged:

INITIATE SYSTEM?

I reached my hand to the massive keyboard and suddenly stopped. It’s not that I was afraid to start a nuclear war or wake up Cthulhu, it’s just…

Ah, to hell with that. I typed YES.

“Shall we play a game?” smiled Romanov. Well, we shared the same fear again.

A mechanic voice thundered in the silent cellar:

“Anthony Edward Stark, born 1970. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna, born 1984.”

“It’s Romanova and Ulianovna. You Americans never spell it right,” she looked around.

“I am not an American, Fräulein”.

“Then who the hell are you?” I asked.

“Doctor Arnim Zola, at your service,” answered the machine. Something like an animated picture blinked on the screen. A man’s face, round, bespectacled. Not pleasant.

It rung some bells, but Natasha remembered it quicker than I dug it out from my memory.

“Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years.”

“First correction, I am Swiss. Second, look around you. I have never been more alive. In 1972, I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body. My mind, however, that was worth saving, on 200,000 feet of databanks. You are standing in my brain.”

“Impressive,” again, I said it just to say something. “Impressive” didn’t cover an inch of how I felt. Being a creator of AI myself, having its neural networks trained and honed for years, I perfectly knew what a gigantic amount of work it took to digitize a human person and bring it to life. And, holy cow, on these ancient devices! Actually, I still forced myself to believe it’s not some practical joke.

“Will you be more impressed knowing that your father had a hand in it? Both hands, I would say.”

“Rather not. I knew my old man did some crazy stuff. Turn a wimp into a supersoldier? Gladly. Save the brain of a dying Nazi? Why not?”

“I am not a Nazi and never was. Nazism proved itself to be a bad commitment. Did you receive my message?”’

“You mean the “Kiss my arse” part? Well, I am here, did my father saved your arse, too? Where do you keep it, in the jar or on ice? Sorry if I couldn’t help kicking it.”

He laughed. Or should I call Zola “it”?

“You came here for answers, didn’t you, Mr Stark? Or Tony? I cannot say I remember you in your swaddling, but was shown pictures and heard your father speak of you, so proudly. I always despised the bodily lusts and human desire to procreate physically, but in those moments I almost envied Howard. And I almost envied him after, seeing what became of his son. I never believed in ‘what is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh’, but you proved me wrong.  So, ask your questions.”

I had so many of them that they stuck in my mouth. So Natasha went ahead of me.

“You were part of the Operation Paperclip after World War II?”

“Yes, Fräulein. S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited German scientists with strategic value. They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own.”

That was the point of my guts freezing.

Cap was not paranoid. He was 100% right.

“HYDRA died with the Red Skull,” I said desperately.

The face on the screen flickered and doubled, like an amoeba.

“ Cut off one head, two more shall take its place.”

“Bullshit!”

“Accessing archive.”

We saw the chronicle unfold on the screens. Schmidt, as he was before the transformation. Schmidt, as he was after. Legions of his goons. A million eyes, a million boots in line, without expression, waiting for a sign...

“HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist.”

The screen showed Rogers. One of his propaganda documentaries, not one of that shitty feature-films, but the real chronicle of D-Day, a moment after the battle when he herded some Nazi prisoners somewhere. It was strange to see the guy sitting now straight above, still young, in a 1944 chronicle.

“The war taught us much,” continued Zola. “Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded, and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside S.H.I.E.L.D. For 70 years, HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war, and when history did not cooperate, history was changed”.

Chronicle again. Group photos: Von Braun, Vagner, Neubert, Poppel, Schulze… others I didn’t recognize. Hands shaken and treaties signed. The Caribbean Crisis. Martin Luther King murdered. Kennedy murdered. The Chilean military coup d'etat. The Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. Desert Storm. 9/11. _Our_ invasion in Afghanistan…

My father’s dead body near his car, on the main road from New York to DC.

“No,” I wheezed.

“I'm afraid yes, Mr Stark. I wouldn’t say my heart bled when I learnt they sent the Winter Soldier for him, but it’s only because I have no heart. And to think he refused to digitize his beautiful mind. What a waste.”

“Bullshit,” I repeated.

“May I show you?” he sounded almost compassionate.

“Show me,” I breathed without voice.

The night road. A car. My folks’ car. A lonely biker. Swift hand motion, almost a flick. The car crushes in a tree. The biker makes a sharp turn, dismounts, approaches the car...

Only the armour kept me standing. Stinging ache pierced my throat. Pierced my eyes.

The biker opens the trunk. Looks inside.

Father falls out of the car. Crawls. The biker watches him dispassionately. Then takes him by the hair. Raises him. And father recognizes the face I cannot see behind the veil of long greasy black hair.

“Sergeant Barnes,” says father.

A metal arm raises, then crushes into his face. My father’s face. A voice from the car. “Howard!” My mother’s voice.

A second strike. I hope he was killed by the first one, oh God, I hope! The second one left nothing of his features.

“Howard!”

I knew what comes next. Wanted to cry. Wanted to run. Wanted to vomit. Wanted to smash the fucking screen. But I stood there and watched the Winter Soldier killing my mom. After he shoved my dad into the car, he strangled her. Didn’t even bother to take her out.

The only thing that kept me from crying was knowing that this Nazi wretch was watching me.

But nothing prevented me from slamming (finally!) my iron fist into the screen.

It died in a web of cracks and a little plume of smoke.

“As I was saying…” croaked the synthetic voice. Two screens came to life.

I blasted them both with repulsors. Four shimmered with silvery green.

“I can smash them all!” I bellowed. “I have a fuckin’ lot of time to tear you apart, bit by bit!”

“No, you haven’t” again he sounded almost compassionate. “I am afraid I have been stalling, Mr Stark. Don’t you already know I can predict the future? In some forty seconds both you and you friend Captain in the jet will be dead.”

The doors slid shut. I blasted them for no effect but a tiny dent. Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck!

“Three missiles with thermobaric warheads, one for your friend, one to open this bunker and one to kill everything inside. Shame I couldn’t tell him in person, what a zero sum his life was. It's better this way. We are, both of us, out of time…”

Well, I was certainly not out of time. I was not finished with HYDRA, with the bastard that strangled my mom. I was not going to die.

The main advantage of being an IT-freak is that in no condition, however distressed and tormented you are, you cannot forget that a huge computer must have a huge cooler system.

And this one was right below my feet.

I tore off the bar, blasted down the cooling blower, embraced Nat closely and jumped into a hole. We hit the water tank just the moment the first missile hit the bunker. I pinned Nat to the bottom with my weight and we stayed underwater while fiery storm was sweeping above us. And then the whole mass of the debris fell on my head.


	8. Things in motion. Steve Rogers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking so long. I had really a bad time and proceeded slowly, but now you know what happened to Steve and Sharon in the jet and afterwards.

Was it just me, or did they really want to give me a moment with Sharon? Was the game of “find Rogers a date” contagious?

It’s not that I didn’t like Sharon. I tried to court her, after all. Yesterday, of all days. A minute or two before the hell broke loose. Of course I was disappointed when I learnt she was spying on me and a little stricken with the fact she was Peggy’s grandniece, but how could I hold grudge after all she had done for me today?

“So,” I started, “It was her?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your insomniac aunt you’d been calling just before Fury was shot. Was it Peggy?”

She nodded.

“If you want to know… She remembered you. At least when she was calling. Sometimes she remembers… things from not long ago. Doctor said, if something repeats often in connection with strong emotion, the effusion of serotonin will cause the growth of synapses, and the event can stick in the long-term memory”.

I closed my eyes. _“You're alive! You...you came, you came back… It's been so long. So long.”  - “Well, I couldn't leave my best girl. Not when she owes me a dance”. Again and again, until she remembers me…_

A pang in the throat. We shared the same pain with Sharon. A person, dear to both of us, was dying, fading away, not only her body, but her beautiful mind, her irreplaceable personality… disintegrating, falling apart.

“They told me not to come,” I suddenly blurted. “She gets excited, it’s bad for her heart”. 

“And if you don’t come anymore, what a long and happy life will she have!”

Sharon’s sarcasm could make metal rust. Maybe, she was right…

 “Tell me…  When you were spying on me from across the hall...”

“You mean when I was doing my job?”

“Whatever. Did Peggy know?”

“She kept so many secrets. I didn’t want her to keep one more. Especially from you.”

I looked at the control panel. Less than five minutes passed since we’ve lost the connection with Tony and Nat. Damn Faraday’s nets here and there and everywhere. And damn  those HYDRA bastards for the umpteenth time. My wounds heal fast, but not as fast as I needed now. And when they heal, they itch like a devil. And you cannot scratch the darned bones. And I felt constantly drowsy because of the healing factor. And hungry. And useless.

That uselessness gnawed at me the worst of all. I hated to be a burden since I remembered myself. I volunteered for Dr. Erskin’s experiment because I wanted to serve my country, even if it was a laboratory rat’s service. And now I was thrown backward, to 30% of my usual capability. My friends were down there and I could not keep up with them.

There is no need to tie myself in knots for Tony, I thought. Even if I were in a good shape, he would best me. In his armor, with a set of sophisticated built-in weapons, with his unrivaled wit and inborn genius, what could possibly threaten him? What could possibly threaten Nat as long as she was with him? Stop brooding, Rogers. Win the battle, brood after. Twenty-five minutes, and they are back. And you have the most interesting woman in this world to talk to. Way better than brooding, isn’t it?

“Speaking of,” said Sharon. “Did you try to court me? Back then, in the corridor?”

“No,” I answered snappily. Stupid lies. “Yes. Was it so bad?”

“No,” she smiled. “Not really”.

I recalled what I said then. “ _Hey, you're welcome to use my machine. Might be cheaper than the one in the basement_.” Pathetic, Rogers.

“That was terrible,” I admitted.

“As far as I know, I am the first woman you’ve tried to court since 1945. So, not that bad, really. I experienced worse. Much worse.”

Well, she was a gorgeous woman, like Peggy was in her time. She had to have her share of pestering men. As far as I could see, the situation improved since the forties, but really not enough.

“Somehow, I feel ashamed for all the mankind,” I said. “Despite being not guilty.”

“Not guilty at all?” she smiled mischievously.

“Except for the sin of omission,” I said.

“The sin of omission is the second kind of sin, that lays eggs under your skin,” she recited.

“It does,” I couldn’t agree more.

Countless times I thought: what if I was more decisive? More persistent? What if I confessed to Peggy? Married her? I knew people that could make it. They had their moment of happiness in the midst of war. Some of them even survived.

_Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,_

_Old Time is still a-flying;_

_And this same flower that smiles today_

_Tomorrow will be dying._

I died, in a sense. I would leave Peggy a straw widow, maybe with a child on her hands. Could she return to the SNR under these conditions? Could she become a co-founder of the SHIELD? I bet she could, she was a fighter. But… I was raised by a widowed single mother. I had seen her travails and hardships. No way I would want to do that to Peggy. No way in the world.

I looked at Sharon in the nearby seat. Now, when I knew who she was, things got… more complicated and simpler at the same time.

Yesterday… Peggy released me. “I have lived a life. My only regret is that you didn't get to live yours,” she said.

And I decided to live my life. I was not going to jump to the Kate’s bed, just to start… to do what people do. Go to the movies. Walk in parks together. Theaters. Galleries. I hope not dances, modern dances make me sick. Just like swing did it to our fathers’ generation, so ironic. Could I lure a modern gal into a swing or foxtrot?

And then, maybe – maybe! – to have sex. Maybe not even with Kate. Not like a consummation of the sacred union, but like modern people do, just for… pleasure? Fun? Or  escape from loneliness? For human warmth, a body against a body, shared passion, shared breath, that feeling of her curves on my plains, her hands on my thighs…

Punishment came along with the crime: blood rushed south, to the area well battered and not quite mended. I crouched on the co-pilot’s seat, trying to breathe deeply and noiselessly through mouth open wide.

“What’s this?” Sharon left her seat and bent over me. I almost leaned at the control panel. Damned kilt could hide nothing, nothing at all.

“It’s OK”, I hissed. “Nothing to worry about.”

Her breast, almost touching my head, didn’t help a little.

“Steve, what happened? Are you in pain? Internal bleeding?”

I wish it was!

“By God, no!”

“Wait a minute!” she dashed at the Dr. Fine’s bag and started to load a syringe with anesthetic. Good. At least her bosom was at the safe distance now. Think of something… something other than her, Rogers. Golden ratio: phi equals AO+OB divided by AO, which equals AO divided by OB which equals 1,61. Too easy. Russian irregular verbs: _gnat, derzhat, smotret i videt, dyshat, slyshat i obidet_ … too easy. Japanese alphabet memorizing song: I – ro – ha – ni – ho – he – to, ti – ri – nu – ru – wo…

A needle pierced my shoulder.  Was it the _Iroha_ or sedative effect of the anesthetic, but in a few seconds I could straighten in the seat and get back my breath.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Not a problem,” she smiled and the dimples on her cheeks almost caused the same problem again.

“Seventeen minutes. What took them so long?”

“You think it’s long?”

“Yep. Do you smoke?”

I have never seen her smoking, but who knows…

“No. Do you?”

“I did. Sometimes. During the war”.

I searched under the control panel. There must be something hidden in the jet. I know a secret smoker when I see one.

Genuinely, I was a heavy smoker some time. Any booze is but calories to me, and after Bucky’s death I tried everything to get wired. Smoking wasn’t considered a vice, like nowadays, so Dernier borrowed me his smoking pipe, and I discovered that inhaled nicotine hits me straight into the brain and takes me to the needed level of emotional stupidity. That was a cure I used and, maybe, abused… but in the new world where I woke up I needn’t it anymore. I was depressed, not restless. When Bucky died, everything sharpened, as if I had no skin anymore. When I woke up and learnt that everyone died, I went numb for a while.

“I have never seen you smoking,” said Sharon.

“I kind of quit. Just… never started again after my awakening.”

I found a sealed pack of kings and a lighter in a pocket of the bag with bottled fresh water, jerky packs and blanket and some clothes and some other useful stuff. There were other bags fastened to the shelf, and this one was marked by the sign of my shield.

Tony knew I could use a smoke. He prepared these bags two years ago, he tried to anticipate our needs.

He was a good man. And Sharon was a good woman. They both deserved better than becoming a substitute for the people I’ve lost.

I limped to the exit and lowered the ramp to have a puff in open air.

That happened to save our lives.

The other thing that saved our lives was Nat’s resourcefulness. She’d brought my bike into the jet.

I lighted a cigarette. Sharon looked at me, smiling.

“Just this one,” I said. She smiled wider.

“People always say that, you know.”

I smiled back, tapped at my earpiece. Come on, Tony!

And then JARVIS said: “Captain, we have three AGMs aimed at us. Estimated time fifty seconds. Evacuation recommended.”

I dropped the stump and rushed to the bike. Sharon grabbed a backpack and my shield.

“Forty five seconds.”

I unfastened and mounted the bike, Sharon sat behind me. I started the engine.

“Forty seconds. I suspect AGM-130 with PT warheads, so make it quick, Captain. I deployed the backup, but they cannot outfly the missiles.”

“Thank you,” I said. It is strange, maybe, to thank to the machine. But JARVIS was more.

“Nat…” said Sharon. “Tony!”

There was absolutely nothing we could do. The engine started and I vroomed out like a devil from a pond of holy water.

I headed to the conditioning course, frantically trying to figure out the weapons effects radius and if it covers the water pit. They aimed at the bunker. Oh, God they aimed at the bunker!

“Twenty seconds,” said JARVIS. I zipped through the camp, silently praying that there weren’t any new fences set here during the last 60 years.

There weren’t. We made it to the conditioning course and I slowed down to zig-zag between the obstacles. It was dark and everything was overgrown with grass and sometimes trees.

We made it just in time. Water pit was almost empty, with a little pool of mud on the bottom.

I looked at Sharon and knew she was thinking what I was thinking: if we are inside the explosive scatter radius, we are both dead. Water could save us from inhaling the flammable agent and from the pressure wave, but there was no water here.

We got down and I laid the bike on its side. Then we fell on the bottom of the pit and I covered Sharon with my body and both of us with my shield. A senseless gesture, but… there was nothing more to do.

Nat… Tony… I could just pray for them. For all I knew about the bunker-busters, like BLU-118/B, they contain the double charge: tritonal, to smash the ground and concrete, and some liquid shit to pulverize inside the bunker and kill everything breathing when ignited. It could pierce 20 feet of earth or so. And I prayed that bunker to be deeper than that.

“Cover your ears and open your mouth,” I said to Sharon. We did it back then, when shelled. Not that it really helped, eardrums suffered anyway. But… again, there was nothing more to do.

Strange things could pop up in your memory when you lie face down and hear the incoming missiles. I remembered the last seconds before the mission to the “Lemurian Star”, when Nat tried to bring me together with Sharon… No, it was Kristen from Statistics. “Too shy or too scared?” asked Nat. “Too busy” I lied and jumped from the quinjet, down to the deep waters.

I was not shy or scared. I was frightened, that’s what dawned on me a second before the blastoff. I was frightened by the possibility of loss, by the pain that comes when somebody you love is torn from your life. So, when I came back from the dead, I closed myself against friendship, love, everything like that, and now, when I was about to lose people I confined myself from I realized how stupid I was.

It didn’t work. Not in the least.

And then came the blast, three blasts in a row, merged in overwhelming roar, and the ground shook like a big dog, and we rolled with Sharon in the mud, and a fiery wind rushed above us, and suddenly it was quiet.

We both were alive and in one piece. A bit concussed, a bit deafened by the explosion, spitting mud and covered in it, that’s all.

I crawled out of the pit.

A pillar of smoke was raising over the place where the bunker had been. Our jet was ablaze. In the volatile light of the flame plumes of smoke mutated in thousand different forms, covering and uncovering the ruins.

I needed to get closer. They could still be alive down there, under the debris.

We rolled the bike up the smooth slope of the pit and mounted. It took me a while to wire the engine, my fingers trembled.

“Wait,” Sharon started to rummage her backpack for something. “We need some respiratory protection”.

I didn’t think of it. I couldn’t think at all.

She made two makeshift gas masks from the spare A-shirt, moistened them with bottled water, and we rode into the cload of smoke and dust.

There were two circles on the earth, clearly visible. The first – where the grass was torn and laid down by the shockwave. Should we happen to be inside this circle, so would be our lungs.

In the second circle everything was scorched.

The bystanding buildings were mostly spared, only windows smashed and walls sizzled. The fire was nowhere to be seen: the shockwave beat it down. Only our poor jet and everything around it still burned bright: spilled fuel withstood the wave.

The bunker was _gutted_. The shell crater in its place, at least sixty feet deep, showed the entrails of some office: shelves, tables, badly twisted electronic devices, everything broken, everything burning what could burn, smoldering with suffocating black smoke. Two bunker-busters pierced both outer accommodations and the inner vault, where something… electronic was stored.

Sharon dismounted and stood above the fiery pit. I couldn’t leave the bike. I would fall if I did. Suddenly I felt how weak, bruised and battered I was. All the pain of this day, all at once, came full on my shoulders, so I had to lean down on the handlebars to bear it.

Tony could have survived this, I repeated to myself. His armor could stand the hit and the fire and the shockwave. But Nat…

Smoke ate at my eyes and my throat. It was not the first time when all my strength was useless. Were I as sound as a bell, still I couldn’t deal with reinforced concrete blocks and with fire. If Tony was still alive down there, I couldn’t help.

Pathetic Rogers. All muscular and resilient, and still good for nothing.

“Steve,” Sharon turned to me. “We have to go. Soon they will be here.”

Something clicked inside me. She was right, they will not leave things to chance. They will not rest till they see our bodies. So, they will come. And I will wait for them.

I pulled the gun from under the belt of my kilt. Nat provided me with a Beretta 92-SB, which meant 13 rounds to take 13 lives. All the STRIKE was armed with the same, so I expected no problems with feeding it. I checked the gun for fouling – it was alright, the mud didn’t get inside.

They expected to break me when they told they are HYDRA. So much effort, so many deaths, and all for nothing: HYDRA still exists – that’s what they wanted me to feel.

That was the biggest mistake in their miserable lives since joining HYDRA. Long nights I spent asking God: why me? Why do I live when everyone I knew is dead or dying?

And now I had the answer. Trying to break me, they gave me the purpose.

The adrenaline rush came and raised me up. 

“Sharon,” I dismounted. “You take the bike. Find the guy in DC, name’s Sam Wilson, a former para-rescue officer…” I told the address. “Tell him everything. He will help.”

“I cannot ride a bike. And I am not leaving you,” she checked her gun too. She had a fine FNX-45 Tactical.

“It’s no big deal, it’s just like riding a bicycle, only you don’t need to push the pedals. And it’s an order.”

“I cannot ride a bicycle. And I don't take orders from you. We both go or we both stay. Full stop”.

I couldn’t believe I still had to say it to the Carter woman, but…

“Do you know I outrank you?”

“So what? I have to let you get killed because of this? You are wounded, Steve! You are not the one man army you are used to be! They will kill you at once.”

She couldn’t grasp what was boiling inside me. She was one war my junior.

“Not at once. And I don’t care. They killed Nat. Maybe, Tony. I want their heads.”

She whacked me with an open palm. I was taken by surprise so didn't block it. The second whack I intercepted in midair.

“What the…” I swallowed the rest “...you think you’re doing?!”

“Bringing you to your senses! We have a mass murder to prevent, so it’s a pretty bad time to go berserk and die with the Philistines! You don’t care if they kill you? Well, damn, I care! And since I have no options to drag you out of here by force, I will at least raise your chances to stay alive. Or I am to die here with you. Because I love you, Steven Grant Rogers, and no way I return to Aunt Peggy to tell her you are dead again. No fucking way!”

As if awakened by her slap, the earpiece coughed some electrostatic noise and then said with Stark’s voice: “Listen to what woman says, Rogers! What she wants, God wants!”.

“Tony?” I was afraid to believe my ears.

“Yeah, nice to hear you, too. Nat is alive, only her earpiece is dead, happened to be non-waterproof.”

“Tony…” was all I could say. The relief was as strong as on that day, when Chitauri attacked New York and he threw his life on the line trying to stop them. When he vanished in the portal, I was about to bite my tongue off for what I had said to him a day before. And then he fell back into our world, unconscious, in a battered discharged armor, shell-shocked by what he had seen and what he had done… That was the happiest moment in my life since I had found Bucky in HYDRA’s facility.

“Where are you?”

“Somewhere underneath you, pal. 30 meters or so. Sharon is right, Steve, take to your heels and be gone. Me and Nat, we are safe here. Safe as in safe. A bit cold and wet and in the thick of the press… though I don’t mind to be in the thick of the press with Romanov…”

“Oh, shut up, Stark!” said Natasha so loudly I could hear her via Tony's headpiece.

“They will search for you,” I interfered. “They will leave no stones unturned.”

“Well, they are welcome to try to squeeze in this fuckin’ coolin’ system!”

“Steve, we are crawling out through the water outlet!” shouted Natasha. “Can you figure out where could it be?”

“I’ll try!” I looked round. If I was a water outlet, where could I be? Obviously somewhere near the river, downstream from the intake station.

And then I heard jets’ engines approaching.

I exchanged glances with Sharon.

If we could find the water outlet, so could they.

“Diversion,” she whispered.

Now, it was not about revenge and berserk rage. We had friends down there. We had to do something to prevent HYDRA bulls from killing them.

I listened carefully to the sound of incoming jets. South. One, two… three. Five seconds or so, and I could see them.

“Incoming,” I said. “Three jets, must be thirty people.”

“Thirty? They have no respect,” Tony grunted. “Thirty I could do single-handed…”

Natasha said something.

“It’s not my fault the armor couldn’t screw through this water pipe!”

I listened to him while riding with Sharon up the road, heading to the kitchen and mess hall, in the direction straight opposite to the river.

“Trace will be seen,” said Sharon in my right ear when Tony was grunting in my left. “Or that’s what you want?”

“Yeah” I said. “It will be most good hunting.”

The kitchen and the mess hall hadn’t changed since I was being trained here. Long one-storey building of solid white brick, it stood on the hill and dominated the entire camp. Only one wall had windows, and in the kitchen they were narrow like gunports. Everyone who would want to storm the house had toadvance through the open ground. And then they wouldn’t know where to follow. Unlike me, who peeled a ton of potatoes within these walls.

We hid the bike behind the building and then I took Sharon (or rather she took me, giving me a shoulder) to the first floor.

Quinjets were just landing when we carefully peered out of the window.

“Tony, do you hear me?”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

“Listen carefully. The plan is simple: Sharon goes to the river and tries to find out where the outlet is…”

I pointed my finger at the water tower silhouette, black against the Milky Way.

“It must be somewhere there, I cannot say exactly, for the bunker was not here in my time. But they should have used the existing water supply system. So there you go and help them out.”

“Steve…”

“Hush. I am the one in command here. Your task is the key, ‘cause both Tony and Natasha are pilots. While I distract those bulls, you capture the quinjet and give them hell. So I promise you, there will be no heroic sacrifices here. Unless you fail. Because I love you too, Sharon Carter. And I am not going to lose you.”

She nodded and rushed away, dissolved in the night, while I watched the STRIKE goons scattering around the quinjets. All of them were wearing gas-masks, but their commander I recognized by his posture.

Brock Rumlow.

So, the FBI was compromised, too.

“Rumlow is here,” I said.

“Natasha said something like ‘blood’,” informed Tony.

“I know what she said. There are three assault crews of ten people, as I told, two men of each crew remained to guard the quinjets, twenty-four are surrounding the crater. They still didn’t notice the trail. Come on, guys, no one can be that stupid. Just to think I was the one to command you. Oh, at last. They left eight men near the crater, sixteen are moving my way.”

Final preparations. I shot all the remaining lidocaine into the left calf and moved out of the mess hall. With every step I moved easier. The leg went totally numb. I cut off all the thoughts of what Dr Fine Fine would say afterwards. If I survive. If he’s not on their killing list. If we could stop them.

The camp was about a square kilometer, and sixteen men are not enough to comb it thoroughly. They were aware of it. Split in couples, covering each other, they were moving slowly. Everyone had worked with me and Nat, everyone knew what we were capable of. I smiled to the thought of whether anyone of them really wanted to find me.

I was hiding in plain sight, behind the infirmary glass door. Glass covered me from their thermal scopes. Two of them passed me by, came to the infirmary door, opened it…

The first one of them I killed with the edge of my shield, the second one I hit with the butt of his own assault rifle. There was a risk he would catch a moment to shoot, but he didn't get around to it. I lowered the man down, dragged the dead body into the room. Took the masks off.

McGee and Ditz. McGee dead, Ditz still breathing. Neither of them was involved in my torture, but since they were here, they were HYDRA. I searched them. Two assault rifles, the M4A1 carbine and the Steyr AUG with a grenade launcher, two box magazines for each, grenades, knives, walkies…

Some noise appeared in the earpiece.

“Cap,” said Tony. “We have a problem here…”

“What?”

“A grating bars the exit.”

“Sharon?”

“I found them, they are OK, but I cannot take the grate down,” whispered Sharon.

“In ten minutes or so I will have a laser,” said Tony. “I have only to crawl back down the tube and disband gauntlets.”

“Can’t you just… summon them? As you did?”

“No, I am done with that summoning. Unreliable. Give me ten minutes. Just keep quiet and don’t stir any noise.”

“May be tricky,” I said. “I just took down two of them. The next time they call over…”

“Echo, Foxtrot, status,” Ditz’s headgear came to life. I took his helmet and put it on.

“Infirmary clear,” I said in a half-whisper. I hoped radio distorted my voice enough for Rumlow to mistake it for Ditz’s.

“Kitchen clear,” said Beverson. "I move on."

They didn’t recognize me. They didn’t… And I could return to the kitchen.

“Find them,” said Rumlow. “That bike couldn’t fly away. Search the barracks.”

There was no time to undress them. Well, anyway I won’t leave the shield, so it would give me away by silhouette no worse than the kilt.

There was the last thing to do: to finish Ditz off.

That’s not what Captain America does, is it? To kill the unconscious helpless person – no, it’s not his style. In those comic books he managed somehow to take HYDRA bases without killing at all, just knocking the enemies out.

Well, the truth is that you cannot guarantee the non-lethal concussion for the time you need. When you take the enemy’s vitally important position, you cannot leave behind anyone who breathes. So you kill. And during the war I felt no remorse for the people I killed. After what I had seen in those HYDRA facilities and the concentration camps we liberated, I killed Nazis and slept soundly.

But Henry Ditz was the man I knew. My former subordinate. I met his wife. She was pregnant with their first. What was he going to say to her when HYDRA succeeds? “Darling, we killed a lot of people today, I am hungry, what’s for dinner?”

And if I spare him, would she thank me seeing her husband in the dock? We have no capital punishment in DC, but treason is a federal crime and he will serve a life for it. If they don’t succeed, of course. “For if it does, it’s never called a treason”. 

They brought the war to our country. To _my_ country.

Sometimes Captain America just cannot do what is right, ‘cause there is no such option.  So he does what’s necessary. Some days ago I left behind alive and untied Batroc, and it almost cost Nat’s life.  

I snapped Ditz’s neck.

Then I lowered a thermal scope to my left eye and slipped out of the door. I ran rather clumsily with my leg encased in the cast and totally numb, but I almost did it in time.  Almost. When I was on the porch, I saw a red and orange silhouette watching me from behind the barracks. He didn’t shoot, my lower part was covered by the railing and he mistook me for one of theirs because of the helmet and the assault rifle slug on my back. I made a gesture: come in, and he followed. His mate followed after him, and then I shot them both.

When you don’t see the face, it is way easier.

Four down, twenty to go.

Hell broke loose on all frequencies. “November-Echo, Papa and Mike down! Mike and Papa down, Roger. Where? November-echo from me. Yankee, Zulu, check! Do you copy? Copy that!” and so on. Nobody had seen the flashes.

“I asked you for ten minutes!” – hissed Tony in my ear.

“Sorry,” I started to prepare the battlefield. Rumlow may have been a mean bastard, but use makes mastery, he would figure my hideout in several minutes.

I barricaded two windows with preparation tables, desktops of solid oak, metal covered. I secured my escape route. And then I swutched to the STRIKE  operational frequency.

“Rumlow.”

They went silent for a while as if they had heard a ghost.

“Well, well, well,” he responded. “Indeed you are a die-hard, Cap.”

“Now I have a machinegun, ho-ho-ho. And the next thing I will have are your balls. You were a very bad boy, Brock.”

“So come and take them,” said Rumlow.

I saw him clearly, the dark figure against the fiery pit. I aimed carefully. Inhale, exhale, steady, fire.

I don’t like guns. Doesn’t mean I am a bad shot. He fell. There was again buzz on the channel. That’s what sniper does to the enemy: panic.

They took cover. But they didn’t know where I was, so three of them rather gave themselves away. Inhale. Exhale. Steady. Fire.

I heard them crying and moaning in the headgear. I recognized their voices:  Frost, Hutchins, Lehmann. I wish I could have a clearer shots, but…

Then I heard Rumlow’s voice again:

“So, you took six. Not bad, Rogers. And now I know where you are.”

“I thought I shot you.”

“You shot Alvorado. Poor sod should have known better than standing in front of the fire. And you should have thought better before attacking us. You had it coming, Rogers.”

I sighed.

“Listen, all you wankers. You killed my friends.  You know me and what I can do. I already finished off eight of you. Eight, Rumlow, not six. And I will kill you all. Every. Last. One. Unless you load your asses into those quinjets and bugger off.”

“You’re talking big, Cap,” Rumlow’s voice gave away some physical effort, he was likely crawling. “Not like in the morning, when you were squirming and howling like a bitch. You hung there, with bare ass, pissing yourself, begging us to stop…”

I noticed movement behind the barrack window and shot the grenade. It happened to be thermobaric, so the one behind the window died quickly and ugly.

“Naaah, Brock, that’s not gonna work. I played this game long before you were conceived. However pissed I am, I still watch the perimeter.”

“Watch this!” Several grenades whooshed at my shelter.

Thermobaric grenade makes a hell of any room it is thrown into, but if it bounces out of a wall, a shield or, say, a huge preparation table, and bursts in the open space, it makes just noise and smoke. Some of those grenades lit a fire in the mess hall, but I didn’t intend to go there anyway, windows too large for a proper defense. So I remained intact.

But that was just the beginning. They started to suppress me with fire, which means: to shoot staccato at my windows, ten or so people at once, so I could barely lift my head, let alone return the fire. Under this cover another dozen of STRIKE men moved towards the kitchen. I fed them with two of M 67, which lessened their enthusiasm but didn’t stop them. They expected a trap wire on the door, so they burst the door out with a grenade.

I didn’t trapwire the door. Why should I if I knew they would burst it out?

I retreated. They threw a grenade into the kitchen, it raised a lot of plaster dust but I remained safe in my shelter.

Then two of them entered the kitchen.

“No contact,” said the first, not seeing me. I didn’t see them too. But I knew exactly where they were, so I lowered my hand and rolled an M67 towards them.

“Holy shit!” They tried to move out of the door. They failed.

Corcoran and Jenkins.

Kitchen is a place with an oven. In this case – a huge stone made oven with a huge chimney.

I fell out of it, and shot the next one who tried to enter, then gave Corcoran and Jenkins a bullet as a coup de grace. Forthcoming firefight was nasty though I tried to save cartridges and they were not hasty to die.

“Okay, Cap,” said Rumlow when fire ceased. “You get your round.”

“I can do this all day.”

It was rather an idle boast, because I was short of ammo and my anesthesia worn out and my leg was killing me. But Rumlow believed me.

“Hawk three, get in the air and level this fucking kitchen!” he commanded.

Quinjets were armed with A-10 Thunderbolts and several kinds of missiles. I decided not to tempt fate and took my escape route.

When you feed a thousand or so young healthy organisms, you have to have not only a huge oven, but a spacious thrash duct, too.

It was spacious enough even for my shield.

There was one thing I didn’t take into account: since my time, for hygienic purposes or something like that, they poured concrete casting all around the place down below. In my time it was an earthen floor, so when my broken leg hit the concrete… that was not pleasant.

Shortly, I fainted. The last thing I heard was Rumlow’s “What the fuck?!” and the last thing I thought – that, maybe, girls and Tony have succeded.  


	9. The battalion of four. Natasha Romanova

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Excuse me for proceeding so slowly. Maybe, the next chapter will be shorter.

Americans say: when you hit the rock bottom, there is the only way: up. But I usually subscribe to Stanisław Jerzy Lec’s point of view: when you hit the bottom, you hear knocking from below.

There was no knocking from below. There was cracking, rumbling and roaring of water rushing down the broken pipes and cracked bottom of the pool. Tony stood above me in the pushup position, covering me from falling debris.

Finally, everything settled down. We were buried underground, bruised and wet to the bone.

“How are you?” asked Tony.

I moved my feet and hands. Except for rock, brick and concrete piled around, nothing prevented me from moving.

“I am OK”, I said.

None of us mentioned Rogers and Carter. It’s not that we didn’t care, we just knew their fate didn’t depend on us in the least. JARVIS had warned them or not. They escaped successfully or not. And neither of us believed in any deity to pray for them.

Tony turned on his helmet lights.

“Try to move. I’m gonna leave this shell. Well, unless you want me upon you…”

“Oh, shut up!” I searched for some space and finally stuck myself… somewhere.

The armor clicked and Tony fell out of it. The red-and-gold shell remained in the pushup position over him.

“Shit. My claustrophobia didn’t get any better”.

I never believed his claustrophobic tales. A claustrophobe wouldn't encase himself into the iron box.

“Close your eyes,” he said. “I need to take a leak.”

“Whoa,” I closed my eyes and recalled his drunken armoured debauchee four years ago. “I thought you have a built-in system…”

“’Twas impractical,” the sound of the zipper seemed too loud. “Required special underwear, and nothing else on. Nat… can you shut your ears, too?”

“And my nostrils? Come on, Tony, I never expected you to be so shy.”

“So didn’t I,” he zipped back. “Shit, I just cannot. Some psychical block. I want it painfully, but cannot…”

“That happens. Let’s get out until we are pressed with a more solid need,” said I.

And then Tony’s headgear came to life and we overheard the most awkward and most affecting love confession I had ever heard.

So, they both were alive.

I was glad they made it. Like Christmas party glad. The world without people like them would be rather shitty. And, for the holy cow’s sake, Sharon managed to say it to Rogers!

I started to play a matchmaker for Rogers mostly because every fucking one in the ops was sure we’d end up in a bed. Just because, you know, I am a gorgeous woman and he is a gorgeous man, so we are kinda destined for each other.

It’s not that I felt no attraction to him. He’s nice. And handsome. And his body is to kill for. But when he came to the SHIELD, I was his tutor for a while. Well, almost for a year. I taught him modern warfare and modern fashion, how to use credit cards and the laundry machine, I gnawed at his neck until he abandoned his lumberjack shirts and preppy bang for jeans and tomboy cut. I felt much like an elder sister to him. And to sleep with him felt somehow wrong. Save the sexual issues that 1930th-educated Catholic might have. He also might not have them, but I’d prefer not to be the one to explore it. We never discussed two topics: religion and sex. The only thing I knew for sure: he was not gay. Believe the woman who headlocked him with her thighs umpteen times. His reaction was unambiguous. So I proceeded with finding him a girlfriend, not a boyfriend. It soon became a game, and after that – almost a ritual. I think I wanted to bring him to some closure. As if the WWII will be finally over for him when he has his dance and the rest of it.

Well, I was terribly wrong. The closure he needed was not to get laid. He needed to finish off the HYDRA. Of which he couldn’t know shit but somehow he felt.

So, the HYDRA was about to arrive and we had to get out. Lucky for us, the main waterpipes were wide enough. Unlucky for us, the outlet was barred. Lucky for us, Tony had laser built into his gauntlets. Unlucky for us, he had to return for them back down the tube, and when he gained them, the rest of the armour collapsed under the debris. Lucky for us, Rogers provided a perfect distraction for Rumlow and his goblins. Unlucky for us, he went off the radars just the moment we successfully attacked the quinjets.

We killed the guards, then Sharon and me disabled two birds while Tony scrambled the third. And then he took us on board and I jumped into my gunner seat and we gave them hell.

I have to admit, I felt really good doing it. I am far from being saint, or even blessed, I am far from being even a decent person, but the standards I keep after my heel-face turn, I keep tight. Mass murder planning didn’t fit them. And not only that. I had the Soviet upbringing which meant: Nazis are bad, beyond any compassion and hope, period. Call it superstition, it happened to be planted surprisingly strongly in me.

I did some terrible things in my life. I deserved several death sentences. On the SHIELD’s service, when I took down terrorists, slavers, drug dealers, I thought from time to time: there but the Fury’s grace goes Natashka Romanova. And I knew that some of the guys I work with – like Rumlow and Rollins – are bad, bad piece of work. Still I could feel remorse killing them.

But knowing they are Nazis changed everything. Now they were but targets for me. Which meant, however I denied my Soviet heritage and tried to get rid of it, deep inside I remained that little girl that cried over Tanya Savicheva’s diary.

Radio was on, and we could hear them crying and dying and trying to take cover. Some of them ran to make it to the kitchen. We could not let it happen. We finished them off, all of them. Except one.

“Romanov! D’you hear me?!”

“Better than I would like to, Rumlow.”

“Then listen to him now,” Brock gave the mouthpiece to someone else.

“Hey Nat,” said Rogers. “We’re in the basement. Try not to kill him; we’ll need a witness…”

 A thud interrupted his words. By Rogers’ voice one could say he was half-conscious. I gritted my teeth and mustered my best Black Widow’s badass contralto.

“Brock, don’t make it worse. Your people are dead, your mission is failed, and since you’ve failed it twice I doubt your bosses would be glad to see you. Surrender and I promise not to kill you. Hit Rogers one more time and I promise not to kill you until you beg for it.”

“Impressive, but no. The deal is like this: you land the jet, leave it and bring Stark here, he helps me to drag Rogers out of the basement. Then I leave our dearest Cap to you and take out with Stark. Don’t be afraid, Tony, we are not going to torture you. We already know everything we need.”

“How about fuck off?” said Tony.

“Then I kill him. I may go down, but with a company.”

“Sonuvabitch,” said Tony. “I’m landing”.

“No tricks, Stark,” said Rumlow. “None of those gadgets of yours. You know what… Strip Stark naked before coming in,” he laughed to his pun.

“What?!”

“Go ahead,” Rumlow laughed again. “I admit Romanov would make a better look, but naked she is twice as dangerous. Hurry up, you have one minute. And you better don’t try to stall.”

“Oh, my…” sighed Sharon.

Tony landed the jet, unfastened his seat belt, took off his headpiece and started to undress hastily, swearing up hill and down dale. I turned off the earphone and gave him two charges of Widow’s bite.

“And where have I to put them?” he snapped.

“Well, you have two options, hence two charges.”

His eyes burned a hole through my skull. He was already in his underwear. Sharon turned away. So did I.

“No need to shove it up, just stick it between your gluteus maximus,” I advised. He groaned and said:

“Lower the fuckin’ ramp.”

I lowered the ramp and put on the earphone.

“Rumloy, Stark is going to you.”

“Great. Get outta the jet, you and that Rogers’ girlfriend.”

“What girlfriend?” I was not hoping much but it was worth trying.

“Cut the bluff, Romanov! The jet crew you took down reported her. So, fuck off the jet, both of you, and don’t even think to sabotage it!”

“Okay, okay!” Sharon shouted for him to hear her. “We’re getting out!”

And then – to me, in a whisper: “What are we going to do?”

“We shall see,” said I calmly. Somehow I was not worried. Maybe, just tired to the bones. Or confident. Rumlow wanted Tony because he knew Tony to be a whimsy pampered billionaire, not a fighter without his suit. Well, the least of a fighter between us four. He would be surprised.  Or not. Tony’s body explicitly showed that our genius-playboy-philanthrope wasted no time. And if Rumlow had read Tony’s files, he could have known that Stark had ripped some enhanced AIM soldiers to shreds, singlehandedly and without his suit. Well, he managed it mostly with his hellishly inventive brain… which, actually, made him only more dangerous. 

I hoped Rumlow hadn’t done his homework.

We waited anxiously, and then they showed up. Tony carried Steve on his back, bent under hundred plus kilos of hardened bones and heavy muscles. Steve’s hands were tied in front of him, clenched on something small and fixed with a cord. Huge chances it was a grenade. Rumlow was wisely covering behind Tony’s back.

“Just in case, Romanov: Cap’s holding an MkII and I am holding a line fixed to the safety pin. I go down, your sweet lovers go everywhere. What, you didn’t know? I dropped my jaw, too. They are gay. Our Captain fucking America is as gay as a guinea fuck. Sorry, Ms Carter. Really sorry, but he’s lost for you.”

He didn’t ask us to drop our guns, for he knew we wouldn’t. That was a guarantee he would keep his part of a deal.

Slowly they approached. Tony made a face at me, which Rumlow couldn’t see. Then they changed the disposition: now Tony was in front of Brock, climbing up the ramp, and he retreated, aiming at Tony’s head.

“Would you mind if I scratch my ass?” said Stark, one final step from entering the jet, “No? Thank you. And now, disarm this fuckin’ grenade and let go of Steve.”

“Get into the jet, Stark. And then I shall decide, if I take you alone or both of you.”

“Kiss my dick, you sick bastard. I am going fuckin’ nowhere until you disarm the grenade. And I am not giving Steve to you. He's had enough. If we die here, all three, so be it. But he’s not yours to torture”.

I knew what would happen next as if it had already happened before my eyes. And when it actually happened a second ago, I watched it with a grim pleasure.

Rumlow lost his patience and grabbed at Steve’s hands to force Tony and his cargo into the jet. He used his left hand, in which he held the line, ‘cause in the right hand he held the gun.

Tony stumbled and fell on his knees, pulling Rumlow’s gun hand down. Steve, who only pretended to be semiconscious, fell on Rumlow, biting at his left hand. Judging by Rumlow’s wail, Rogers used Widow’s bite, which Tony passed to him while… kissing, if I understood Rumlow’s “gay” rant correctly. The second Widow’s bite Tony drove straight into Rumlow’s groin. They all were holding each other, so shocked were all three, and it was miracle that Rumlow’s shot went off the mark, but they did it. I and Sharon rushed up the ramp. I secured the grenade and Sharon unleashed “ _A female of the species_ ” on Rumlow till he lost his senses. Tony tried to get into his pants, having the underwear part skipped. Everyone was busy.

Five minutes later the ramp was closed, Rumlow was tied, Tony was dressed and Steve was hauled into the passenger’s seat and fastened to it. I left Sharon to take care of him and lowered into the co-pilot’s seat. Tony took the quinjet in the air.

“’ere ‘e ‘re ‘oin’ ‘o?” Steve moaned, his mouth still numb from the electric charge.

“Stark Tower,” answered Tony. “JARVIS! JARVIS, do you copy?”

The air was silent.

“Maybe, too far,” I presumed with a little of hope.

“Maybe,” Tony grimly agreed.

“’Ony,” said Steve. “I’ ‘ey ‘ave a ‘rain o’ sense i’ ‘em, ‘ey woul’ ‘e ‘ere a’rea’y”.

“Have a rest, Cap. I’ll hear from JARVIS, and then we decide what to do.”

Steve sighed. He could outstubborn protopope Avvacum, but now he was heavily groggy. Sharon rummaged through the first-aid kit for medications. Bullets or splinters clipped him here and there, but he barely felt it: he was on a verge of collapse.

“Sharon,” I said. “He needs food more than anesthetics.”

“A’es’e’ics wiw ‘o,” Rogers added two consonants to his armory. I swore to myself never try to widow-bite anyone using my mouth.

Sharon found coke and protein bars for all of us and shot Rogers with something that made him stop trembling. Everyone was silent for a while, sipping at coke and chewing at bars. And suddenly JARVIS’ voice sounded in my headgear.

“Mr. Stark, can you hear me? Mr. Stark, are you alive? Mr. Stark, can you hear me? Mr. Stark, are you alive?”

“Hear you, pal,” replied Tony.

“I am extremely glad that you survived the explosion, sir,” was it me or was there a sign of relief in AI’s voice?? “What is your status?”

“Airborne, proceeding home in stealth mode,” said Tony.

“Going home is strongly not recommended, sir. The Stark Tower is besieged.”

“What do you mean?”

“Approximately a half an hour ago two Federal agents, Brown and Visconti, showed up in the lobby and demanded the arrest of your property. Your human personnel was shown the orders and escorted from the premises. FBI SWAT, thirty-four men, occupied the building. I was not instructed to protect it against humans, so I am playing possum and waiting for your instructions.”

“You do well,” said Tony. “Can you deploy the Iron Legion?”

“I’m afraid, no, sir. The assembling line was stopped on the court orders. Override?”

“No. What charges, by the way?”

“Ridiculous, Mr. Stark. Treason, illegal keeping of weapon and tax evasion.”

“What!? Tax evasion? Oh, for the fuck’s sake!”

“You are wanted, sir. All of you are wanted for destroying the Lehigh military base and killing a platoon of the SHIELD officers. You are all over the news. May I show you?”

“But of course”.

The tactical screen came to life with the latest news. Anchor, an elderly man with his hair smoothly combed, was caught in a mid-phrase:

“…about the private war of so-called Captain America. Our reporters are still on their way to New Jersey, but we have already received a record of the negotiations between Steven Rogers and the SWAT team sent to secure him…”

An unfamiliar voice said:

“Captain Rogers! We will do you no harm! Please let us take you home!”  
And Rogers’voice replied:  “Listen, all you wankers. You know me and what I can do. I already finished off eight of you. And I will kill you all. Every. Last. One.”

“Great,” said Tony, when JARVIS finished. “Now the eighties are back and we are inside the fuckin’ _Running man_. Have you seen it, Cap?”

“I’ve read the wook,” said Rogers, bilabial sounds still tough. “Y’know, that ancient device, that ufloads the inforwation straight into your wrain, via the eye sockets. Handy.”

Tony chuckled.

“I land,” he said. “We have to talk it over”.

 “Where?” asked I.

“Anywhere.”

He landed a jet straight on the field between two tree belts, so no one could see us from the nearby road.

“Where are we?” said Sharon.

“Somewhere between Westchester and Wilmington, I cannot say precisely with navigation off,” Tony unfastened his safety belt and got out of the seat. “It is quiet here, far enough from neighborhood, so we can take our sadistic friend out and feed him his own pills as much as he can take, until he spills his guts.”

“Tony,” I said. “You really mean that?”

“Of fucking course. HYDRA owes me a lot, and I start collecting my debt from him.”

Rumlow raised his head.

“What, Stark? Now you know what it is like to lose everything? Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but son of Howard Stark has no place to lay his head?”

Tony kicked him in his lower back.

“You better not mention my father, son of a bitch!”

I dragged him off.

“You must not torture him, Tony.”

“Why? Because we are good guys? We are above this? Or what?”

“Because it takes a cool head to torture someone,” I answered. “And you are in anger. He could easily play you to make you kill him. And… you are a civilian. You just don’t know how it’s done.”

“I know very well how it’s done! I took some classes in Afghanistan!”

 “Did they breake you back then?”

“No!”

“Exactly. They failed, so you will. He is conditioned, Tony. Like me and Cap. He will feed you bullshit. ”

“Then let’s do it just for fun.”

“We have no time for this kind of fun,” said Rogers. “Rumlow, how one can stop those helicarriers?”

“Bite me.”

Rogers sighed deeply.

“Listen, Brock, I really have no time for these games. Not gonna talk – to hell with you. In my time HYDRA footmen never let themselves to be taken prisoners: they just bit a false tooth with poison, ‘Hail HYDRA’ and ciao. But since you are so practical now, I think: do you really expect a third chance?”

“That might do if I bring your heads.”

“Fat chance. Tell you what. Back then, when I pretended I would crack for Pierce, when I bargained for my life, you bought it. You know why? Because that’s what you would do in my place. So, let’s just skip the bloody and gory part and get straight to bargaining.”

“I don’t see anyone to bargain with,” said Rumlow. “You are toast, Cap. You and your friends here. Dead, full stop. Badass you may be, but there is a limit even for you.”

“Don’t underestimate us, Brock,” I smiled. “The last time we got our stuff together, god’s ass was kicked.”

 “It was Hulk’s job. Where Hulk is now?”

“Actually it was Tony Stark who killed off the Chitauri army and Romanova who closed the portal,” said Steve. “Though,” he smiled wistfully, “seeing Loki tramped into the pavement was sweet…”

“Not to mention, we recently have torn your squad apart,” added Tony. “So, we can protect your sorry ass from your former friends, if you prove yourself to be useful.”

“To decimate our squad is one thing, to take down three helicarriers is another. You don’t fucking understand what you are dealing with. They predict every step of yours. Every fucking one. You are alive just because they keep sending us people after you, and people are flawed, so you keep handing us our asses. But the moment those helicarriers launch, you are dead. I am dead, too, no matter what I do or say to you.”

“Speaking of,” said I. “I wonder why they haven’t sent the Winter Soldier with you?”

“Winter who?”

“The masked man with a metal arm,” said Steve.

“Ah, the Asset,” Rumlow smiled. “Dunno. Unlike you, Rogers, I don’t argue with my superiors and don’t ask questions.”

“You have to know something. Since we all are dead, why not share?”

Rumlow grinned.

“Well, you have yourself an evil twin, Cap. Fast, strong, robust as hell. A fucking Terminator. A bit retarded, though. Kinda crazy. Sometimes he needs techies to put him on his trolleys. Maybe that’s why they didn’t send him after you in the first place. I asked them to send him to interrogate you. I knew he could scare shit out of people, and he wouldn’t fall for your ass, so you couldn’t kill him as easily as you smothered that poor bastard De Marco.”

“Where is he?” Steve’s voice and face hadn’t changed.

“This, I will not tell. Do whatever you want to me. I cannot wait for you to show you true colors, Cap.”  

“Playing hero doesn’t suit you,” said Sharon. 

“Believe it or not, Carter, I’m fighting for what I think is right. You have no fucking monopoly here.”

“How in the world killing twenty million of people is right?” there was a dangerous overtone in Steve’s voice, which Rumlow marked. We worked together for two years, and he knew exactly, that the more enraged Steve is, the calmer is his voice.

“Just like in any other war, Cap. Just like in Dresden and Hiroshima. You remove the key figures, instill fear in the hearts of others. ”

“And what for, actually?” asked Rogers. “Excuse me for being so pushy, but I never had a chance to talk to any of you guys without you poisoning yourself or me being restrained and beaten. So I’m curious: what you are fighting for?”

“For order, Cap. Is it so hard to understand? Imagine the world where you see your kid go to school not being afraid of some punk shooting him because he had a bad day. Imagine your wife or daughter returning home late at night carelessly, because there is no bastard in the alley to rape them. Imagine Hutu living in peace with Tutsi, Arabs with Jews, Russians with Chechens, because everyone knows: the first motherfucker to draw his weapon will be eradicated before he pulls the trigger. Imagine the world where no psycho alien god can thrust in. Wouldn’t it be better than this?”

I clenched my teeth. Since I remembered myself, I had those order-praising speeches more often than I had a decent meal. They wrenched bile out of me.

“And how did I happen to be put on the list among those bastards?” asked Tony.

“O, spare me, Stark! You perfectly know, how. You fly where you want in that armour, challenge terrorists, make friends with aliens, and ask me how the fuckin’ algorithm sees you as a threat? You know what? INSIGHT thinks that the next year you, no other, will cause the death of approximately twelve thousand people, and that’s the best case scenario.”

Stark whacked him across the face. I caught his hand when he was about to deliver a second blow.

“Tony! Tony, stop! Don’t you see he’s playing you?”

Rumlow laughed, licking blood from his upper lip.

“Good guys, aren’t you?” said he. “Always willing to sacrifice yourself for the better world? Well, this is the moment. Just stay down. Have a day of your life. Get laid. Get drunk. And when the time comes, embrace your death proudly. As the heroes you imagine yourselves to be. Give a way to the ones that will do your job better.”

“The ones like you?” asked Steve.

“No. I have no delusions about myself, Cap. I am garbage, and when cleansing is over, garbage is tossed away. But I agree with that. I may be a sadistic bastard, that doesn’t mean I’m a coward.”

I was barely restraining myself. I am Russian, after all. I have had my share of this “Ones to destroy me I greet with a hymn” bullshit.

“When you agreed with killing of 20 million people, which part did it cover? ‘Sadistic bastard’ or ‘not a coward’?” I asked.

“And how many will die if we let bitches like you run loose, huh, Romanov? Who had you been before the SHIELD took you to do their dirty job?”

“An assassin,” I replied. “And were it only us assassins on that list, maybe I would agree, too. But the point is that most of the people you plan to kill are innocent.”

“No one is innocent, save Jesus Christ, and He was crucified. This algorithm has no flaws. No one is put on the list for nothing.”

“You put on that list everyone who could ever threaten you!” roared Tony. “Who would disagree with your Brand New World Order, no matter if they are only a schoolchild that tweeted about anarchy and did nothing more! That algorithm of yours, it was written by Arnim Zola, a fucking Nazi mad scientist! And cut this ‘flawless’ crap! Nothing that comes from a Nazi is flawless!” 

“Are you nuts, Stark?”  finally Rumlow looked like taken aback. “Arnim Zola died forty years ago!”

Rogers sighed. “JARVIS, stop the recording here.”

“What?”

“What?” Tony and Rumlow asked simultaneously.

“Yes, sir,” said JARVIS.

“Nat, could you please take the garbage out?”

 “With pleasure,” I grabbed Rumlow by the shoulder. “By the way, Brock… looks like you have a thing about stripping men naked?”

“Oh, yes!” grinned Tony.

“You must be kidding, Romanov,” it was the first time Rumlow showed something close to fear.

“Nah,” I cut his ties.

I made him strip not only to take a petty revenge (though not without it) or to make him talk (I knew he wouldn’t) but to keep him busy for a while. April nights are still cold on this latitude, so he should move fast to keep himself warm, and by the morning he would have ridden himself to half-death. And I wanted him to be caught stealing clothes.

“As your superior officer,” said Rogers, “I should execute you for the treason. But since you are a dead man anyway, I’ll spare a cartridge. If you want to die now, just stay under the jet.”

“What, you leave me here?! Like this?”

Rogers shrugged and pushed the lever up. Ramp closed.

“Why don’t you want to kill him?” asked Tony.

“Oh, I do,” leaning on Sharon’s shoulder, Steve lowered back to his seat. “I really want to. But I think that the Winter Soldier cannot be in two places at once, so if he’s sent for Rumlow, he’s not sent for us. And that record of his interrogation would be seriously compromised if I killed him.”

“How I missed the part when you ordered JARVIS to record?”

“It was your order, sir,” replied JARVIS. “When you told me to go live on YouTube”.

Whoa. Rogers remembered what Stark himself had forgotten.

“Well, I want this interrogation on YouTube, too” said Steve. “Tony, Nat. We still don’t know what happened down there. How has Zola emerged?”

“Do you want to discuss it here or we launch first?” asked Stark.

“Launch.”

“Where?”

“As close to DC as you can take us without getting on the radars”.

“As you command,” Tony took his seat, fastened the belt and started the engines.

Since he could not use the navigation equipment and the autopilot, and had to pilot himself, it was I who told the story. How we descended into the dusty recess of the last Red Skull’s dragon, how we found him and woke him up, how he enchanted us with his truths, sliced and minced into lies, how he showed Tony the Winter Soldier killing his father and mother.

I told the story with the language of an official report, so dry that my tongue almost rustled in my mouth. Steve’s face was unnaturally still. Hadn’t I known him for two years, I would mistake this stillness for the cold-bloodedness, but in very deed it was his best attempt in hiding pain.

“So, they killed Howard,” he said when I finished. “Now it feels kinda personal.”

I burst into laugh. It’s not that the irony of situation struck me too hard; it just accumulated for the whole long day, and I needed to discharge somehow. I laughed, or else I would cry.

I was raised by the most cynical people one can imagine. They took us little girls, orphans, and forged us into lethal weapons, making us believe that we were little patriots, defenders of our country. The Soviet Union fell apart when I was nine, and then I was told that now we are to serve Mother Russia, against all her enemies, former sister republics included. And then they started just rent us out, for money and political influence, but mostly for money. My first killing mission was to Ukraine, where I put down some thwart banker. I never asked any questions, I was sixteen and still believed it was done for Motherland.

Two years later I discovered it was done for the business deal, in which the customer gained about 180 million due to the exchange disruption, my supervisor gained about 10 million and I gained a “Good job, gal, prepare for the next task”.

Well, _that_ felt kinda personal. So I went freelance, like many of us. Look at those youngsters, the word _"patriotism"_ means nothing to them nowadays! I made a name for myself. And one day the SHIELD sent Clint Barton to put me down, and Clint decided otherwise…

“When I first joined the SHIELD, I thought it was going straight. But I guess I just traded in the KGB for HYDRA. I thought I knew whose lies I was telling, but...I guess I can't tell the difference anymore.”

“There's a chance you might be in the wrong business,” said Rogers. His face was deadpan yet I knew that hint of snark in his voice.

“Well, you seem pretty chipper for someone who just found out they died for nothing,” I parried.

“Well, I guess I just like to know who I'm fighting.”

“The point is,” said Sharon, “they are still two steps ahead of us. We almost lost our lives and marked ourselves criminals, but obtained no solid evidence of HYDRA’s existance.”

“Except for that Rumlow's interrogation record,” Tony put in his two cents.

“Which ends with your rant about Arnim Zola, long dead in the world’s eyes,” said Rogers.

“We can edit it.”

“No. We drop it in the net as it is. Along with the killing list. It’s for people to judge if it is false or true.”

“Bad idea,” said Tony. “Maybe you hadn’t noticed yet, but people are generally stupid. Individuals may be brilliant, but en masse the IQ of the crowd equals the average year temperature on the Spitsbergen Island. Besides, I doubt any of us can come up with anything good. I’m done for today. The only thing I want is to land this bird and hit the cot. Or the floor. Any level surface would do.”

“That’s what we all need badly,” I said. “Steve?”

“Huh,” he sounded.

“His leg,” said Sharon.

It was to be expected. His broken leg was swollen and the cast cut deep into the skin and muscle. He didn’t moan either because Sharon pumped him with everything she found in the first-aid kit or because he was _hrenov_ Captain America and played Trojan ad finem.

But it took us the rest of the night to land in Patuxent, steal a car at Greenbelt and get to the cottage on the 61-th North-East.

A handsome black guy of my age or so remained remarkably calm when he saw me and Sharon with Rogers impersonating “Stronger than death” statue and Stark looming behind, on his threshold.

“Hey guys,” he only said.

“I'm sorry about this. We need a place to lay low,” exhaled Rogers.

“Everyone we know is trying to kill us,” I added.

“Not everyone,” he let us in and closed the door, shutting French blinds.

His place was neat, almost like Rogers’. We four were the dirtiest part of this accommodation. Actually, I didn’t understand how dirty we were until I saw myself in the ante-room’s mirror in the light of day.

We proceeded to the parlour, and there Rogers finally collapsed on the sofa.

Our host shook his head: “Goof grief, man, you look like Richard-York-gave-battle-in-vain. I would say you need a doctor, but… you, guys are all over the news and not in the best plight and order.”

“We know,” I said. “I need big scissors.”

He brought the scissors and I took the cast off.

“Looks nasty,” said the black guy, whose name I still didn’t ask.

“Marrow gets into the blood stream, hence the swell and the fever,” said I, not as much for him as for Sharon, who looked troubled. She carefully palpated Rogers’ shin. He gritted his teeth.

“I cannot detect any dislocated fragment,” she said. “It must be a fracture.”

“I need some rest, that’s it,” whispered Rogers. “Maybe, some food.”

“May I use the bathroom?” asked Stark. Before anyone answered, he said “Thank you” and vanished behind the door.

“He’s Tony Stark, isn’t he?” said the host. “Iron Man?”

“Yes,” I extended my hand. “Natasha Romanova. She’s Sharon Carter.”

“Sam Wilson,” he shook my hand. Sharon just nodded, she didn’t want to leave Rogers’ side. “Nice to meet you.”

We retreated to the kitchen.

“You sure he doesn’t need a stitch?”

“I am not. But I think he’s mostly exhausted. He needs rest, as he said. First of all.”

“And then food,” Sam opened his fridge. “The problem is…”

Fridge was almost empty. A bottle of milk, half full (let’s be optimists), a package of orange juice, three eggs.

“What are you, a model?”

“A paraglider. Must watch my weight.”

“Milk and eggs will do, for a while. Have some sugar?”

“Here.”

I started to mix egg-nogg. Stark left the bathroom. He was wet and clean, and shamelessly used the male privilege of walking shirtless.

“Coffee”, he said. “I need a huge cup. And a laptop. Or a desktop. Whatever. Preferably running LINUX.”

“You need to sleep,” I objected.

“No, I will sleep when I deal with our little hairy mass murdering problem. Where is the note? Coffee, I’ll prepare myself.”

“Is he always like this?” asked Sam.

“Pretty much.”

With Rogers’ help we clapped Sharon into the bathroom. Tony got his laptop and started coding, I couldn’t get what. I composed the shopping list for Sam who volunteered to provide us with clothes and food and drugs. I gave him my credit card. That was the card Sharon shopped with, and, though nameless, there was a chance it was tracked. So I instructed Sam to hit Walmart, pay for everything in one bill and dispose of the card.

“You need some rest, too,” said Sam, putting his shoes on. “You look like princess Anastasia’s ghost.”

I smiled. I liked him. For that matter, Rogers liked him, and he had a knack for people.

“How long do you know him?” I asked.

“You remember the day you picked him on jogging cource?”

“That was four days ago.”

“Well, that’s when we first met each other.”

Rogers, you clot! When you are awake, we’ll have a word or two about trusting people you met less than week ago.

“Looks like you have a problem with trusting me,” smiled Sam.

“I just hate when I have to trust people only because there is no other option.”

“But there is. You could easily kill me and have my house and my car to yourself. Like in _The Day of the Jackal_.”

I frowned.

“You have a very devious mind, Mr. Wilson. Shame on you.”

Laughing, he left the house. I went to the bathroom.

The woman that looked at me from the mirror, I didn’t like. She was a haunted, worn-out witch with desperate eyes. Her hair was clotted with blood, her eyes sank, her skin grayish pale.

Shower improved the things, but not much. I was still pale and tired and hungry. I put on the T-shirt and pajama trousers generously lent by our host and robbed him of tea and some crackers. Nice to meet an American who keeps tea in his kitchen.

Sipping from the big mug (in Russia, we used to call those vessels _sirotinushka_ , “poor orphan”) I stood at the parlour door, watching our fab four. Stark was frantically coding, sometimes chewing his lips, sometimes smiling to himself. A year before Rogers was found in Arctic, Fury sent me to babysit Stark. He suspected the man was about to die, and he was right: the arc reactor Stark had implanted in his chest was slowly killing him. Now Stark had the thing removed, along with the rest of small, sometimes microscopic warhead fragments, and even the scar on his chest seemed not so ugly. It was a bit awkward to see him without a shining circle in his sternum.        

Rogers lay prostrate on his back, with his leg lifted on the sofa’s pillow, ace bandaged to lessen the swell. His minor wounds were tended to; his face wore the same grayish pale mark of exhaustion as mine and Sharon’s. The girl, dressed in Sam’s bath robe, slept in the arm-chair, holding Rogers’ hand.

“Looks idyllic, huh?” asked Tony.

“What are you doing exactly?”

“Forging a weapon, what else. And the sooner I finish, the sooner I go to bed.”

I gave him a look.

“OK,’ he said. “When JARVIS accidentally found out the whereabouts of our dead Nazi cyber zombie friend, we were working on the targeting algorithm decryption.”

“So you resumed it?”

“Hell, no. That was stupid. I let him engage me into the intellectual pissing contest. Shame. You know that method of pickling the problem? When you just let it pickle in your head for a while, until your subconscious pops up with the solution?”

“Didn’t call it so, but yeah.”

I wanted him to get straight to the matter, but I knew he needs honours, marks and complimenting, like many of the love-deprived children. So I was patient.

“So, it dawned on me somewhere between Greenbelt and DC. I don’t need to outsmart Zola. I don’t need to decipher the code. I don’t fucking need a sophisticated targeting algorithm that predicts human behavior. All I need is a program that does only one thing: smashes the nearest big fucking helicarrier with big fucking guns. And I need it viral. So, I produced this.”

He showed me the display. I recognized some patterns well enough to value the elegance of simplicity.

“It’s wonderful,” I said. “The question is how we smug it into the helicarrier and reprogram the targeting system.”

“The answer is _we_ do not,” Tony copied the file into his cloud storage and closed the notebook. “ _I_ am the one to get to the helicarrier and reprogram the system. You provide the distraction. Let’s hit the bed, Nat. I am tired out, you too. The guy said we can use his bed, it’s wide enough. And don’t make an attempt on my virtue, Pepper would kill me.”

“Have you written to her? Three words: I’m alive, I’ll be back?”

“Nah,” Tony frowned. “She knows if I’m alive, it’s on the news. And it will be on the news if I keel over.”

“Write her you love her.”

“It’s a thing to say, not to write. Come on, woman. I am sleepwalking. My brain is dead. Good night.”

He fell on the bed. I made myself another mug of tea and kept my vigil until Sam was back.

“Did as you said,” he unloaded three big packages onto the kitchen table. “Bought everything at once, disposed of the card. Go to sleep, princess. If anyone comes, you will be of no use in your condition.”

I had to agree. I almost reeled when I stood and almost slept when I sat down. I went to the bedroom, moved Tony on the bed without scruples and lay beside him, without a thought of his doubtful virtue.

I slept, it seemed, about a minute or two. And I dreamed of my first celebrity crush, Mikhail Boyarski, playing d’Artagnan in that old Soviet musical movie.

When I woke up, I heard all the company discussing… well. That explained the dream.

“I think, it’s obvious,” said Rogers. “I am a big eater, I am strong, I cannot avoid battle, so I must be Porthos.”

“No way,” said Stark. “Porthos was a jovial ladiesman and a good drinker. You are brooding, prudish and running away from women.”

“Ahem,” said Sharon.

“And when you finally fall for a woman,” added Stark, “it’s an English blonde. No doubt you are Athos!”

“You said first I am d’Artagnan,” said Sharon. “Now you are making me into Milady. My thumb is down.”

“But you are a spy!”

“I am not a psychopath.”

“Whatever. All I wanted to say is I am Porthos, no one else.”

“Athos was a drunkard,” reminded Rogers. “And a hypocrite. And a wife-abuser. I am not him, certainly.”

“Said the man in a wife-beater’s A-shirt.”

Three voices whooed in dismissal. I got to the kitchen.

Sam was sitting on the window sill, Sharon, Stark and Rogers – around the table.

“Hi,” I said. “I was dreaming about Saint-Gervais bastion, now I know why.  Which role did you leave for me?”

“Aramis,” said Rogers without hesitation.

“Aramis,” Stark affirmed.

Sharon shrugged and nodded.

“Does it count that I’m a woman, a Russian and not particularly religious?”

Stark tossed me a can of guarana energetic drink.

“No, it doesn’t. You are cunning, badass and pretty. Pretty badass.”

“Pretty?” I opened the can and took a drink.

“Stunningly beautiful,” said Sam. “Besides, we just stated that everyone here meets the pattern rather loosely.”

“Dress up and join us,” said Rogers. “We are on a tight schedule”.

Everyone else were dressed, partially in their own washed clothes, still rumpled after the laundry machine, partially in what Sam had bought. Steve’s shirt and kilt were destroyed, so he wore a cheap tracksuit. In this garment, together with bruises and stubble, he lacked only a golden chain to complete the look of an authentic _bratok_. Sharon and Stark boasted new hoodies. I was granted black jeans, a tank top and a faux leather jacket.

When I joined them at the table and sank my teeth into the turkey sandwich, Sam said:

“So, now it’s four of you against the world.”

“Not the world,” said Steve. “Just HYDRA. And four is a battalion.”

He smiled at me. It was I who gave him that book.

“One marine is a marine,” I quoted. “Two marines are a toon. Three marines are a company. Four make a battalion.”

“How about a regiment?” Sam tossed a file on the table, thin and rather shabby.

“What is it?” asked Sharon.

“A resumé.”

A photo fell out of it, I picked the picture.

There were two men in it, Sam and a white guy, both dressed as para-rescues. And I recognized the landscape…

“Is this Bakhmala? The Khalid Khandil mission, that was you”. I gave the picture to Steve. “You didn't say he was a para-rescue.”

“Is this Riley?” asked Rogers.

“Yeah.”

The picture was passed from hand to hand.

“I heard they couldn't bring in the choppers because of the RPGs. What did you use, a stealth chute?” I asked.

“No. This,” he tossed onto the table another file, marked “EXO-7 Falcon”.

“Oh, I know this!” exclaimed Stark, grabbed the file and started to thumb through the pages. “Actually, I made this. Not alone, of course, Stark Tech made this… Seemed a great idea at first, but battlefield casualties rate turned out to be extremely high, for the wings could not carry both trooper and his protective gear…”

He didn’t look at Sam’s face. Didn’t see how it hardened.

“It’s an understatement,” said Sam. Only then Stark looked at him.

“Sorry, man. I did my best, it’s not my fault that Iraqi did better.”

“No one blames you,” said Sam. “The thing was extremely good, but it took too much time to master it properly, and, as you said, no protective gear. And we used to keep our weight under 170 pounds, like mother-loving ballerinas. Excess two or three pounds, and the maneuver miscalculation could be fateful. Non-battle casualties were extremely high, too…”

“I was told that all of the wings were destroyed,” Stark raised his brow.

“Well, the question is, do I trust you guys enough to admit stealing from the army.”

“You smuggled it from Fort Mead?”

“What I smuggled was a pile of garbage, discarded property. But I used to work in my granddad’s repair shop, and I am good with putting garbage together. So I ask: do you need an airborne?”

“Of course we do!” yelled Stark, but Rogers wouldn’t be himself if he wouldn’t say:

“I can't ask you to do this, Sam. You got out for a good reason.”

“Dude, Captain America needs my help. There's no better reason to get back in. Unless you want to stick to that Musketeer pattern…”

And that was it. We could start our company planning right here, eating on-the-job.

Tony told everyone about his counter-algorithm and about his ace in the sleeve.

“The last armour suit I assembled was meant not for me. It’s a little bit… well, it’s kinda peculiar, and it was refused by a person it was made for, so I put it on the shelf. I can summon it via the net, but the Stark Tower is under strict surveillance, and the moment JARVIS deploys Athena, we are in the crosshairs…”

Athena? – I silently wondered. Had Stark assembled a suit for Pepper?

“So we have to do it immediately before the mission,” said Steve.

“Exactly. I put it on and slam into the helicarrier to reprogram the targeting block. You provide the distraction.”

“Wouldn’t work,” said Steve.

“What? How? How would it not work?”

“First, I doubt one helicarrier could sink two others.”

“Man!”

“Second, if we prevail… and that “if” is Stark Tower big… What happens next? Who will look like a terrorist and who – like a provident doer, that foresaw a terrorist attack and took countermeasures? It’s not that I’m afraid to take the blame, Tony. God be my witness, I go to jail if it guarantees that they will never rise again. Will they?”

Stark answered nothing.

“Steve,” I said. “I know you don’t appreciate murder as a method, but sometimes beheading an army is the only way to win the war.”

“Pierce,” he closed his eyes, considering the option.

“We shall be branded as murderers, then. Where’s the difference?” said Stark.

“A murder doesn’t always look like a murder,” I explained.

“You have a very devious mind, Ms. Romanov,” said Wilson. “Shame on you.”

“No,” said Steve. “It’s HYDRA we deal with. Cut off one head…”

‘Maybe… No, it’s nothing,” said Sharon.

“Go on,” Steve smiled.

“What if we just… go out from the underground and tell the truth? I watched news when I woke up, many people think that our Rumlow interrogation record and the killing list are not fake.  Sorry, it sounds stupid…”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Steve. “It’s OK, we are brain-storming the problem. But… _What is the_ _Law_ _of the_ _Jungle_ _?”_

“Er… survival of the fittest?” said Stark.

 _“_ _Strike first_ _and then give tongue,”_ Sam smiled.

“Yeah. If we could strike and give tongue simultaneously…” Steve closed his eyes again. I knew he will come up with some decision. “If we could provoke them to demask themselves…”

“Man, they have abducted and tortured you, and then they have managed a great escape for Rumlow and his goons, and then they have rocketed Lehigh camp and busted me and got away with this all. I cannot imagine how they can compromise themselves any more.”

“I can,” said Steve. “But… you wouldn’t like it.”

“If it will bury the HYDRA, I don’t care whether I like it or not,” said Stark.

“Well then… We can bury it along with the SHIELD and the World Security Council.”

Everyone looked stupefied, me included. Rogers looked us over and went on:

“How do you think people will react if they know that the SHIELD and WSC tried to nuke Manhattan during the Chitauri invasion? That the SHIELD experimented with mass destruction weapons based on the Tesseract technology? And so on? I know how the intelligence acts, I served in it. It’s dirty. Tony, do you remember when you hacked into the SHIELD’s database? Can you do something like this – but dump the data into the Internet? _Urbi et orbi_?”

“They hardened their security systems since then, but, given the time…”  
“We can manage better than hacking,” said I. “We can have an authorized access.”

“Pierce,” said Steve. “His retina scan.”

“It takes two retina scans to get the authorized access,” I reminded. “But tomorrow morning the entire World Security Council will gather in the Triskelion.”

“You mean what, the UN Security Council?” Sam was a bit out of his depth.

“No, it’s different. The UN is too hard to gather if we need something to be done quicker than in a month. So they elected the fast response squad of the most populated countries’ representatives, which can speak for approximately one third of humanity,” explained Sharon. “They oversee the SHIELD.”

“The nuking of Manhattan part intrigues me a lot,” Sam looked genuinely disturbed.

“Er, the official version,” said Tony, “when they sent a rocket for me to carry it through the portal… it was fake. I mean, they had really sent a rocket and I did perform a home delivery, but they hadn’t it done on my request. They shot the rocket to fry everyone on spot: Chitauri, us, civilians…”

Sam glanced over us.

“Can we just burn the place to the ground?”

I smiled. He was definitely my type of a guy.

“But, Steve… if we do it… if we compromise the SHIELD… That means we destroy everything she built. Everything she was striving for,” said Sharon sofly.

“It’s destroyed already,” the same pain echoed in his voice. “And you know it.”

The plan took its shape. We had two airborne, so we could hit straight into the Triskelion’s sancta sanctorum. We had three people that knew the site, so we could calculate the best routes for the attack and retreat. We had one Tony Stark and one me to reprogram the helicarriers. Two of them reprogrammed would be way better than one. And we had one Rogers to do what he does best: inspire people with his own example.

Well, I liked this formulation better than the other: to be a martyr.

There were many people in the SHIELD that were not the HYDRA. The majority, in fact. Techies, field operatives, coordinators, people that did their daily work solemnly and now were at loss, totally misguided. They needed someone to set them back in lines, and Captain America was a right guy for the job.

Which meant: he and Sharon would have no way to retreat if things went to Jericho. When we ‘give voice’ – by which I mean dumping all the SHIELD’s dirty laundry in the Net, – Sam would take me, and Tony would fly by himself, to helicarriers for reprogramming them. And our newly minted lovers would be left to keep the fort with as many people as Steve could raise, mostly techies and guards, against pro killers from the STRIKE. It’s not that we would fly to safety; burning hell awaited us, but at least we’d have wings to try the escape, and they would be locked in the midst of a blood bath. To be witnessed, for that was exactly the point. You know, in Greek the word martyr means not as much “the one who gets himself tortured and killed”, as “the one who witnesses and is witnessed”.

OK, none of us had chances to survive anyway.

“Well, let’s go for the reconnaissance,” said Steve.

We chose different transport and different routes. Sam took Tony and Steve by car, I took the subway, and Sharon went by bus. We met in Virginia and moved down the river, pretending to be two Russian tourists given a tour by their American friends. We crossed the Theodor Roosevelt bridge, making selfies and laughing, then walked up the Rock Creek, past the Watergate (DC is quite a small place), to the Mole, then returned to Virginia via the Francis Scott Key Bridge, and when we finished the circle, we had a nice set of shots for JARVIS to turn them into a decent 3D model of the Triskelion. I was worrying for the timing: we spent too much time in a place alive with videocameras. Of course we did all the cheap tricks to alter our appearances, we wore sunglassed and baseball caps, but that could happen not to be enough. I expected the attack any moment, but it didn’t happen. So I sighed with a relief, seeing Sharon off at the Arlington Cemetery station (it was her turn to take the subway) and getting on a bus for the ride up to the North-East.

When the bus was about to go under the Henry G. Shirley Memorial Highway, _pizdets_ happened.

There was shooting on the highway. And then the explosion. And then someone was thrown by this explosion off the highway, headfirst, and bumped straight into the windscreen of our bus.

 _And holy hell, that was Rogers_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tanya Savicheva, "Soviet Anne Frank", was a girl from Leninrad (St. Petersburg) whose entire family starved to death during the Siege (1941 - 1944). Tanya was rescued from Leningrad, but lately died of tuberculosis.
> 
> Protopope Avvacum - a dissident-priest of late 17th century, imprisoned for 15 years and finally executed for his immovable fidelity to the Old Orthodox church.
> 
> hrenov - effing 
> 
> If you want to know how the sculpture Natasha refers to looks, here it is: http://art-otkrytie.narod.ru/images/festival.jpg
> 
> Bratok is a singular for _bratva_.
> 
> "A Batallion of Four" is the short story written by Russian writer Leonod Sobolev, famous for his stories about the WWII marines.


	10. The blood-dimmed tide. Sam Wilson

That morning I was a law-abiding citizen. Well, not very much law-abiding, while I was in possession of the wingsuit I was strictly forbidden to possess, but still. I had a job, I was a respectable man, a vet, with a mortgaged house and an almost paid-off Chevrolet.

And in a moment I became a fugitive, hunted and running.

He fell on us like a fucking avalanche.

Winter Soldier.

Rogers was the first to notice him.

“The SUV right behind us! Tony, get down!” he cried.

A split second later someone landed onto my Chevy’s top, so heavily that the metal bent under him. And then the hand broke into the window and grabbed Stark by the shoulder, trying to yank him out of the car. Fucking metal hand!

Rogers grabbed Stark by the other shoulder, and for a moment they played a tag of war while Stark yelled in pain. With the other hand Rogers jerked the hand brake. Winter Soldier lost his balance and went flying boots over tea kettle. But God, he was deft! He made a perfect somersault and a neat three-point landing before my car, slowing himself down with his metal hand that left fucking _furrows_ in the pavement. Sparks fireworked from under his fingers.  I am not easy to scare, but I felt like I was gonna lose some weight, right there.

Rogers dragged Stark onto the front seat, ass up. Stark swore like a lord and cried “Athena, JARVIS! Deploy Athena! NOW!” That would be too funny for words, if it was not for Winter Soldier, straightened in a full height before our eyes and silently waiting for us to come.

I knew I had to hit the accelerator and run him over, but I still wasn’t in condition to do it. I wasn’t at war, because, hey, ‘twas Washington, DC, ‘twas the Henry G. Shirley Memorial Highway, from which the freaking Pentagon could be seen! Despite everything I still couldn’t believe that HYDRA was really upon us.

And then the SUV rear-ended our car so hard I almost hit the windscreen and Stark finally made his lift-over, now with his boots on the dashboard. We rushed forward, and Winter Soldier waited for us unflinching, like some fucking cyborg, and when we were about to bump him, he jumped capriole, and landed on the car top again. The next moment my windscreen burst in a million shards and the metal arm yanked the steering wheel out with the lock and stock.

My doomed Chevy fishtailed from left to right, impelled by the SUV, and the next hit on divider could be the last.

Rogers grabbed Stark and bellowed: “Hold onto me!”

I hugged them both like dearest brothers. Rogers smashed the door out just the moment poor Chevy caught the air. We fell off like some motherloving hamburger: the door, the shield, Rogers, Stark and me. Like in a slow-mo, I saw my Chevy flying over us, wheels up, all sounds just vanished, stiffened with the rush of blood in my ears. Cars were running past us, and it was a miracle we didn’t get under somebody’s wheels. We hit the ground with a bang, the world returned to normal speed, sounds of brakes and motors washed over me.

The impact was hard. Stark squeaked, and I didn’t want to even think of how Rogers felt bearing us both. I lost my grip almost at once, went rolling, grazing hands, elbows, knees, but, God be praised, not breaking any bones. Cars made wild sounds, maneuvering around me, and I was stupefied by the fall. It took me a few seconds to come to senses and get up.

I saw Winter Soldier raising a carbine with a grenade launcher.

I saw Rogers pushing Stark aside.

I saw the grenade hitting right into his shield, exploding and throwing him away straight into a bus.

I fell again.

I have a perk that saved my life more than once: dissociation. When things go to shit I sorta fall apart. Just like that time in Iraq, when they fried Railey just before my eyes. There was one me that cried and writhed in anguish, and the other me that kept maneuvering and shooting like nothing had happened. 

This time, I split again. One half was crying in despair because a friend died while I was watching, AGAIN, and there was nothing, fucking NOTHING I could do, and the other half was taking cover and moving towards the Chevy’s corpse, to take wings from the trunk and fly Stark away, for without him we couldn’t do shit about those blasted helicarriers.

They wanted Stark, too. They wanted him alive. So they scattered and started to look for him between the cars. It’s not that I was simply forgotten – they shot in my direction, but since they couldn’t see me, it was random fire.

I had no intention to fight them: there was no chance for me against Winter Soldier, and his four thugs as a backup. Flight was the only option for me and Stark, so I moved carefully towards the Chevy… until someone shot the masked motherlover from under the bridge.

An inch higher, and we’d say good riddance to the metal-handed wanker. But nay, he was a lucky bastard, too. The bullet only sled along his protective goggles and broke one ocular. He tore them off, cried something in Russian and jumped from the bridge. Two thugs followed him. Since they weren’t any enhanced human species, they used ropes and jumars to descend. The other two were left behind to find Stark.

With two of them armed with machineguns and two of us, armed with bare hands and one knife, chances were still shitty. But Stark thought otherwise. He figured out that they wanted him alive and decided that was a perfect moment to strike.

I must admit I underestimated him. Of course I knew him to be badass in his badass armor suit, but never expected him to be a really good hand-to-hand fighter without it. I was dumbstruck surprised when he crawled from under the car, fell on a Russian thug from behind and headlocked him promptly. But that was it: Stark failed to down his rival at once and failed to smother him. The thug started to bang him against the nearest car. The other thug turned to them but he couldn’t shoot because they fought too close and he was under the order to spare Stark, so he shouldered his gun and rushed to them to participate in the fisticuffs.

And that was a moment for me. As silent as I could manage in my sneakers, I approached him from behind, grabbed at his gun – a Galil MAR, good Israeli toy – and slit his throat from ear to ear. The hidden part of me panicked: Oh, God, Sam! Oh, God! You just murdered a man in plain sight, in the middle of DC, with safety cameras everywhere and so on!  

The other thug I hit with the gun butt into the midriff and then Stark made the final effort and broke his neck.

“You’re good,” said I.

“I am fucking brilliant!” he exhaled and took thug’s M4A1. There was a firefight under the bridge and we looked out to see who was fighting whom.

Well. The disposition was like that: the bus, in which Rogers crashed headfirst, was lying on its side. Looked like Rogers startled the driver, he lost control and was bumped by a truck. The rouge Russian redhead was taking cover behind the said truck and shooting akimbo at the Winter Soldier and his henchmen, and, for the love of God, Rogers was covering her with his shield.

(The other Sam cried: no way!  No man could have survived this! – and we both laughed madly.)

He had a hard time because of the bastard with a handheld M134 Minigun. He said something to the redhead and she ran off to the Mariott Arlington. Winter Soldier took after her. The police car finally arrived – only to be burst apart by the grenade of this fucking killing machine.

I eased Cap’s burden, having shot one of the gun thugs. ‘Twas bad I couldn’t get the machinegunner, he was under the bridge. Rogers, crouching behind his shield, moved against the avalanche of bullets, faster and faster, like he ran against a strong wind.

“For the fuck’s sake!” Stark shouldered his gun, rather ineptly, and rushed to the car which was used by the Russians to arrest their ropes.

I intercepted him. Letting him go down was bad idea, he was too precious to be lost to a stray shot.

“We take wings,” I said.

“No, we take ropes, it’s quicker.”

I cut off the rope and the debate.

“Are you kidding me!?” bellowed Stark.

The machinegun below us died. Along with the machinegunner, I hoped.

“Are you okay?” cried Rogers from under the bridge.

“Safe and sound!” I replied.

“Sam, take the wings, take Stark and get him away! I go for Nat!”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

Stark followed Rogers with his eyes while I got to my poor Chevy and opened the trunk to take the wings.

“You know you are not his subordinate, right?” asked Stark while I was tinkering at the straps. “And neither am I.”

“What is your point?”

“He may look good and talk big, but I know how badly he was tortured just yesterday morning and I saw how badly he was hit just now. He is no match for that weirdo. Even with Natasha. He will need us both.”

“Agreed,” I said, fastening the last strap. “But drop the gun first. Too much weight.”

“A pistol? May I take a pistol?”

I nodded. While leaving the Galil, I enriched myself with a thug’s SIG Sauer. Tony took the other thug’s Glock 19.

There was shooting up the South Fern. Then an explosion.

“Hurry-hurry-hurry!” Stark roared.

“Hold onto me as onto your own life,” I said, and when he grasped at me, I launched straight up.

Now, there was a problem of which I had forgotten to tell them. I cannot fly on my Falcon wings, I rather soar. That’s why we Falcons aren’t seen on the radars and infra-red scopes: we do not use any drive.

Except when we make a zoom launch. To get up, I need a high point and a favorable warm stream of air, or... a rocket engine on my back.

With additional weight of a full-grown man, even as compact as Stark was, I need a hell of ascentional power, which meant: I burnt out my three-minute propellant load less than in a minute. I only could get as far as Mariott building.

“Whoa, man!” cried Stark when I dropped him on the roof. “What are you doing?”

“Sorry, Tony,” I said, retreating to the edge.  “I am out of gas. You are the key man, you are the brain. Find the girl. Finish the job. I go help Cap”.

“No way! That sonuvabitch killed my folks! He killed my mom! Listen to me! Listen! I want to put him down! I have every right!”

 He only persuaded me to leave him there. He was too eager, too reckless. I couldn’t let him Leroy Jenkins himself into the fight with that deathmonger.

I flew away while he remained on the roof, promising me more fucks than I could ever wish.

I flew up the street, making my way towards the pillar of black smoke from a burning car. And then I saw the fight.

Well, it was not just a fight, it was a clash of fucking titans. Cap and Winter Soldier were moving so fast, I could hardly follow them. They dented the cars throwing each other at them. Winter Soldier was mean. He had a fucking armoury on him, and he used everything, guns and knives and his iron arm, Cap only could defend himself with his shield – but Jesus, he was good with that shield, he was a perfection incarnate. He was not only fending off bullets and blades, he was attacking, hitting Winter Soldier ruthlessly, with the face of the shield and its edge.

I had to make several circles to lose some altitude. Natasha was nowhere to be seen at first, and then I noticed her – leaning on the car, kneeling in a puddle of blood, she tried to make use of the Winter Soldier’s M4A1 with a grenade launcher. But it was in vain while Cap and Winter Soldier locked each other in a dogfight. And I could do shit until I performed another circle to drop off the last thirty feet.

And then shit happened. Cap threw Winter Soldier over the shoulder and tore the mask from him. That was the moment Natasha was waiting for, and the only thing Cap had to do was to step away from her line of the fire, and we both cried to him to step away or get down, but he just stood there, like frozen, and said something I couldn’t hear, but Winter Soldier responded in a loud voice, so I heard him:

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

And then he raised his pistol while Cap stood motionless, not even tried to defend himself with a shield.

Praise God I was low enough to fall on the enemy, landing my foot into his face and beating the gun out of his hand. I downed him, but that was of no use: Rogers just stood there, his face a blue screen of death.

The momentum of landing threw me fifteen feet or more from them and I couldn’t stop Winter Soldier when he recovered from my hit and fell on Cap again. Something happened to Rogers so he couldn’t respond in his full strength, like he did before. So the bastard ravaged him as he pleased. He hit him on the left leg and stroke him down. He knew exactly where to hit.

I ran at them but Natasha made it first. She hung on Winter Soldier to slow him down, and did the strangest thing ever to be done in combat.

She kissed him.

Winter Soldier stopped at once, as if turned off. And then he grabbed Natasha and pinned her against the nearest car. And then he returned the kiss. He kissed her violently, having not noticed that she was bleeding from the shoulder, that she was moaning with pain.     

I took his knife from the ground and rushed forward to finish him off, when the new kids appeared on the block:  four or five police SWAT vans, full of armed guys, which surrounded us with appropriate cries like “Get down! Get your fucking face down!” and effectively handcuffed us when we complied.

They would have gladly butchered us on spot, but the one in charge saw the TV-helicopter above and told them to keep us alive for a while. Judging from the Cap’s face, he knew the one in command.   

They stuffed us into the van prepared especially for Cap. There was a chair-like thing welded to the wall, with metal restraints for hands and legs. They put him into it, fixed him with iron bars and locks. He offered no resistance. Well, any resistance would be futile, I must admit, but still my other Sam was mad at the man’s transformation from lion to lamb in the most improper moment.

They sat me and Natasha over against him on the bench. Two guards accompanied us. The doors closed. The van moved.

Cap started to come to his senses.

“What happened there?” I asked.

“That was Bucky” said he, as if it could explain everything.

I almost repeated the question heard from Winter Soldier: who the hell is Bucky? But I only looked Rogers into eye.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a dry coarse voice. “James Buchanan Barnes, my friend. Since… long before the war. It was him. He looked right at me like he didn't even know me.”

Oh, I thought. That Bucky. But…

“How's that even possible? It was like seventy years ago”.

“Zola. Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43, Zola experimented on him. Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall. They must have found him and...”

“None of that's your fault, Steve,” said Natasha. Good Lord! She was in pain, she was bleeding, and still she had the strength to comfort Rogers!

“Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky,” he was totally consumed with his grief; he hardly noticed anything at all.

Fucking great! – screamed the other Sam. You met your BFF and now we all have to die because of this, and you, the great Captain America, apparently are not going to do anything about this!

Shut up, I told him. Just think it could be Riley taken prisoner and tortured into absolute madness, like that poor sod in ‘Homeland’. What would you do if you met him wrapped in a bomb-vest, murmuring in Arab and killing right and left? What would you do, huh?

He shut up and sorta merged in me again.

“We need to get a doctor here” I said. “We don't put pressure on that wound she's gonna bleed out here in the truck”.

The guard pulled out a tazer rod and made a zap in the air. I was beyond being scared, but my mouth went dry.

But before I opened it once more to ask again for Natasha and, maybe, get a rod in it, the guard turned to his fellow and… zapped him. And then he added two crushing kicks into the head.

The second guard fell like a bag of shit and the first one took his helmet off… and turned out to be… her.

“Ah. That thing was squeezing my brain,” said that lean white woman. And then she turned to me:” Who's this guy?”

“Sam Wilson,” I said.

“Maria Hill,” she  uncuffed me. “Press the wound. Nat, dear, hold on for a minute. We’ll reach the city outskirts and then… it will be interesting.”

She had no keys from Rogers’ restraint locks, but she had a thing that cut through metal. In a minute or two Rogers was free and sacrificed his A-shirt to bandage Natasha.

Something beeped in Maria’s pocket. She produced out a cellphone and said:

“Hold onto something. We go bang.”

Well, that was the underestanement of the year. We went BANG and BOOM and CRASH! The van bumped into something then started swirling.  We dashed against the walls and benches no matter how we tried to grip at something. Rogers curled around Romanov, protecting her with his body. I tried to be a gentleman for Hill, but my effort was futile. Then the van stopped, balanced a little and fell on its side I fell on Maria and decided to remain where I was because a shooting started. And then, just as abruptly, it finished.

The door was ripped from its hinges. A tall, iron-clad figure stepped in, bowed down and asked: “Is everyone alive?”

“Mostly,” Rogers uttered a groan. “Hi, Rhodey.”

Well, superheroes come in bunches.  First I met Captain America, then Black Widow and Iron Man, and now War Machine. Or should I say Iron Patriot? Those rebrandings bamboozle me a bit.

Ruined cars and dead men were scattered around. Colonel Rhodes helped Natasha out and shepherded us in a hurry to another van, black and blind and worn, but doubtlessly civilian. Stark was waiting for us there.

“You!” he pointed at me. “You asshole! How could you…”

Rogers grabbed him by the shirtfront and shook a little.

“About Winter Soldier and Howard. We shall talk. Later. Now do please shut up.”

“Steve, don’t,” said Natasha feebly.

“Don’t?” he rubbed at his face as if he wanted to tear off his skin. “You should have told me!”

“Told you what?!” cried Stark. His surprise and dudgeon were genuine. Rogers slackened in his seat like the spine was taken from him.

“Winter Soldier,” said Natasha. “Before he killed your father, he said “Sergeant Barnes,” remember?”

Tony looked at her, than at Rogers, realizing…

“Not really,” he finally said. “We were bombed and blasted and too busy surviving to remember. And now, I don’t really care. He may have been your friend then. He is but a hired murderer now.”

“He couldn’t remember me,” said Rogers. “What had to be done to him to wipe all his memory? He was experimented upon. Brainwashed…”

“And my mom was simply murdered!” bellowed Stark. “So take your righteous rage and stuff it up your ass to look even more upright!”

I found myself holding Rogers by his shoulders while Colonel Rhodes was blocking Stark.

“Easier,” said Hill. “Our van starts to draw attention.”

“Steve,” Natasha exhaled. And that was enough for him to calm down.

We arrived at some dam, long abandoned after the river it locked went dry. Rhodes carried Natasha like a bride, some grayish man ran towards us, a medical crew rolled stretchers behind him.

“GSW. She's lost at least a pint,” said Hill to the… doctor, I presumed.

“Maybe two,” added I. Rhodes lowered Natasha on the stretchers and we moved into the dam premises: Natasha on her stretchers and the doctor beside her, then me and Hill, then Rogers and Stark, not even looking at each other, and Colonel Rhodes brought up the rear, as if he feared that those two would go at each others’ throats.

We left the corridor behind and reached a room turned into a medical ward.

The big black elderly man, stretched out in a medical cot, was waiting for us there. His bald head reflected operating lamps like a polished boot. His one eye was bloodshot, the other covered with a patch.

I didn’t know him, but heard enough to recognize the person announced dead two days ago.

Nick Fury.   


	11. A bunch of lonesome heroes. Sharon Carter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So much for NaNoWriMo, mwahaha!

It was Walsh who intercepted me between Farragut West and Farragut North and scared the living hell out of me. He was dressed in a well-worn black hoodie with the hood low on his brow, black jeans, black shoes and he had a black eye.

“Don’t return to that nice li’l house, babe, they keep an eye on it,” he whispered in my ear, hugging me with only one hand but so firm as if I were his one true love, long lost and now brought back to him.

“Who they?” I hissed, hugging him back and contemplating on dropping him from the passageway.

“You know. HYDRA.”

 “So, you are a believer now?” I moved away to the arms’ length.

“Kinda yes. Some guys from FBI SWAT paid me a visit last night and gave me this,” he showed at his black eye. “And my left hand is shot through. That’s why I hold it in the pocket. Those bastards are in FBI too. CIA, NSA, army, Senate, they are fucking everywhere. Ab haedis segregare oves is pretty difficult for now.”

“And how do I know that you are of oves, not of haedis?”

“I am on their killing list”.

“And how could I check it?”

“Oh, come on, Sharon! My hand hurts like bitch, my eye is swollen, why would they do it if I were one of them?”

“To make me think you are not?”

“Believe me, all they had to do was to wait until you get to Sam Wilson’s house. They set an ambush there. Come with me.”

 “Why should I believe you?”

He rolled his eyes.

“Sharon, paranoia is good. It saves lives. But right now it’s quite inappropriate. Let me take you to the dirty old man, who would be gray because of you four, hadn't he already been as bald as my knee. He will explain everything.”

I was still wavering when I saw Brock Rumlow.

“Kiss me”, I said to Osborne, and almost bit into his lips.

He responded rather enthusiastically.

Rumlow passed us, not paying attention, in a hurry. He wore off-size trousers and a sloppy baseball jacket; I hoped he didn’t kill anybody for those clothes. His face was bruised and swollen, but I had no time for malignance, wondering what the hell he was doing here while we were expecting him to run and hide.

“The bruised guy in a sloppy blue jacket,” I whispered in Osborne’s lips.

“See him. What is he?”

“Brock Rumlow, STRIKE. The one that hunted us at the Lehigh camp.”

“Ah, the top honcho of the runaway HYDRA goons. And who decorated him so colorfully?”

“I did.”

He looked me into the eye.

“You are a dangerous woman, Sharon. I swear I will never, ever debar your passage.”

“We have to follow him!”

“No, we don’t.  There could be a whole bunch of those bastards wherever he is going, and I am nothing like Captain America to take them down. I am to get you to the safehouse, period.”

“You just said you would never bar my way.”

“We lost him already. Get over it”.

I jerked to free myself, he grabbed at my shoulder more tightly.

“Sharon, listen. There are three fucking helicarriers out there and a fucking army of HYDRA mooks, and we are a bunch of lonesome heroes, so every bayonet counts and I am under the strict orders not to lose you.  Comprendes?”

“Si,” I stopped prying out. “Comprendo. Let’s go”.

So he brought me to the dam, to appear before Fury’s eye.

They spared me from learning about the skirmish on the Henry G. Shirley Memorial Highway, so I was totally unaware when Hill brought them in: Natasha, half-conscious on the stretchers, Steve, visibly limping, with blood clodded in his hair, Stark, cross as two sticks, and Sam, a little grazed, and then no one else than Colonel Rhodes, all in his patriotic armor.

“A very lucky man you are,” said Steve to Fury, when I helped him onto the pallet makeshift cot and started to cut the sneaker from off his swollen foot.

Fury grinned. Indeed he was a very lucky man, for hadn't Steve been so thrashed, he would have given Fury a fine dusting, and had Fury been thrashed a little less, it would be me to give him a gip. Or it would be Stark. Or Nat.

“Was it me who made you fly to Lehigh? Huh?” old Cyclops frowned. “You should stay in Watergate, guys, we were totally prepared to extract you out of there.”

“Well, someone forgot to warn us,” said Steve, gasping through his teeth while I finally took the sneaker off him.

“I was told by Dr. Fine that you are a mess. That you are not going anywhere from the penthouse. Really sorry for underestimating you.”

Doctor Fine took a peek at Steve’s leg, not distracting himself from patching Natasha.

“He is a mess,” he confirmed. “Ms. Carter, give Captain a fentanyl shot and give me a hand here..”

“No,” said Steve. “I don’t need a withdrawal on top of everything. I am fine. Just give me some aspirin and go help doc, Sharon.”

“Withdrawal? From a single dose? Seriously?” Sam leaned at the jamb.

I did my math.

“Opiates are close to our own endorphins, so your metabolism must integrate them in a moment. And it will take way more than one dose to knock you out.” 

“Exactly,” sighed Steve. “I can handle pain, but withdrawal is a real bitch. Aspirin will do. A horse drench of it.”

“Aspirin is stone age,” I smiled. “Wait a moment.”

I was mad about them, having themselves got into trouble just the moment I left them (as if I could change a thing if I remained). About myself, about the entire situation, where we killed a lot of people, almost died ourselves and suffered a lot, but gained nothing, only made fools of ourselves. I rummaged through Dr. Fine’s drug storage as if I ran my fingers through worry beads, until I found some Indocin that should relieve the fever as well.

“Besides,” said Stark to Fury. “How are you?”

“Oh, nice of you to ask. Lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum, shattered collarbone, perforated liver, one hell of a headache.”

“Don't forget your collapsed lung,” reminded doctor Fine.

“Oh, let's not forget that. Otherwise, I'm good.”

Natasha said with a weak voice: “They cut you open, your heart stopped.”

“Tetrodotoxin B. Slows the pulse to one beat a minute. Banner developed it for stress. Didn't work so great for him, but we found a use for it.”

Doctor Fine finished with her shoulder and I helped to install an IV with artificial blood into her arm.

Steve wolfed down a good share of pills and slumped back on the cot.

“Why all the secrecy? Why not just tell us?”

“Any attempt on the director's life had to look successful,” said Hill.

 “Can't kill you if you're already dead. Besides, I wasn't sure whom to trust,” added Fury.

“Really?” Steve almost yelled. Then he turned to doctor Fine. “Listen. I know you had a full plate with him wounded an all, but… that was mean. I cannot fathom how mean it was.”

“I didn’t know about Barnes,” regret in Fury’s voice seemed genuine. “I am sorry.”

“And what about Zola?” snapped Tony. “About my parents? Did you know? Are you fucking sorry?”

“I was told the project failed. Frozen in 1980. That Lehigh camp is an empty shell.”

“That’s what you were told? You know, Cap, I take back what I have told you back then. He is the lousiest spy in the world.”

Steve said nothing, and from his face I could tell he was beyond caring. Doctor Fine was palping his shin at the moment, and he was visibly displeased with what he felt.

“Colonel Rhodes, could you please carry Captain to the X-Ray room? I have inserted a titanium rod into his bone and I need to see if it was bent by that kick, who the hell ever did it.”

“His army pal did it,” Tony’s voice could make milk curdle. “Brother in arms, so to say…”

“Tony,” exhaled Steve. And then turned to Rhodey: “I walk”.

“No, you don’t!” snapped Fine. “Enough stress for this bone. I don’t want it fucked up more than it is already.”

So Steve gave in to Rhodes and was carried away in the iron hug. Fine followed him. Sam wanted too, but I blocked his way.

“What happened there? What did you get yourselves into?”

He made a sigh, long and heavy as a road rail.

“We were ambushed on the highway. Winter Soldier was there. He and Steve fought, Steve demasked him. He happened to be James Buchanan Barnes. Like, THAT James Buchanan Barnes, from the schoolbooks. He was kinda zombie and Cap kinda zoned out, and Winter whaled the tar out of him for a while, and then I landed on Winter and kicked him really hard, but he was a fucking unstoppable war machine and only stupefied when Nat kissed him… And then they got us and Ms. Hill and Colonel Rhodes rescued us, and that was the end of the Highway Battle Saga”.

I looked at Natasha.

“What?” she said. “It was the last resort, OK? They degraded him to the basic instincts, so I figured out he would not resist one of the most primal. Hardly would work twice,” she sipped at the vitamin drink someone had given her.

It took time for me to put the ends together…

“Wait a moment… Winter Soldier was the one who…” I looked back, but Tony wasn’t there. He was nowhere around. “Bloody hell…”

“Yeah, just like that,” Fury nodded. “Bloody hell. We need to tear down the “Project: Insight” and two our heavy-weighters are almost at each other’s throats.”

“What’s new?” Natasha laughed. Hill and Fury smiled too.

“Well, boys and girls, we all need a rest, and after that we’ll have a talk. Three hours to smooth your feathers and then I wait for you in the mess hall”.

“Come,” Walsh appeared somehow behind us. “I’ll show you to your room.”

The inner accommodations of the dam were damp and dark and chill. Autonomous arc reactors provided the facility with energy, so no one could trace the illegal plug-in to the city network. There were lamps and heaters everywhere but all the effort to fight chill and darkness was futile. Concrete was unpleasantly cold and wept with condensate.

Fury must have prepared this hideout long ago. There were about thirty people here right now, medics and techs and some field agents, all from New York, I barely knew them. Some chamber was turned into a dormitory, two rows of palette cots along the walls. Walsh handed me a warm army jacket and an army sleeping bag and showed me to my cot.

“How did you happen to get here?” I asked.

We sat on the cot, shoulder to shoulder.

“Well, as I said, they sent people for me. My co-workers. Whom I knew. I opened the door. Invited them in. But after I met you four, I was… not really convinced, just uneasy. So I was armed. And when they attacked, I was ready. Though, obviously, not ready enough…”

He rubbed his injured hand. Then he shrugged.

“There was a firefight. I won. And after that I searched them. I found my arrest warrant. Though they never told me they were going to arrest me. I had to be killed during an attempt to flee, I suppose…“

I took him by the shoulder feeling a sudden urge to comfort him. Well, it was Steve I wanted to console in the first place, but some solace might have spilled over the top.

He was a good guy. We met during the investigation of some incident which looked like an extraterrestrial intervention but turned out to be a mere criminal affair, though pretty inventive. Walsh showed his best, and he courted me for a while… until the Chitauri crisis fell upon us, and I fell for Steve.

“That feeling of betrayal…” said Osborne. “Funny I cannot stop blaming myself for blindness. I know it’s not my fault that my colleagues happened to be dicks. Still I blame myself.”

“Welcome to the club,” Steve came in, dressed in grey army sweats, leaning on the crutch, his KAFO rattling on the concrete floor. He sat heavily on the opposite cot, almost fell on it.

“Baba Yaga, kostyanaya noga,” Natasha entered after him and sat on the cot in the corner.

Sam threw a sleeping bag at her. A second sleeping bag he threw at Steve. A third was thrown at the furthermost cot with NBA master’s precision.

“I am a wanted hobo and my car is smashed,” he said. “Have a good time, boys and girls, I am going to curl up in the corner and cry myself to sleep.”

But he didn’t, because a tech girl wheeled the rolling table in, and we got some instant noodles, sausages and canned pork and a whole thermos of coffee to wash it down. They had mercy upon us and didn’t make us to go to the mess hall.

“Where is Tony?” I asked, looking at one portion that remained intact.

“Out with Colonel Rhodes to meet the ATHENA,” Maria Hill appeared at the door. “He will join later. I hope you will have rest. As much as possible.”

“How about you?” asked Steve. “Have you slept today?”

 “A while,” she smiled. “And I could have slept more, if some devil hadn’t brought you to survey the Triskelion.”

“My bad,” said Steve. “Sorry for not knowing what you haven’t told me.”

He was still pretty pissed and it was no wonder. Wouldn’t I be like that in his stead? Frankly speaking I couldn’t even imagine myself in his boots. It’s not only what he has endured since yesterday morning, it’s all this shit with him being frozen for sixty years and woken up in another time with everyone he knew dead, and Aunt Peggy dying, and suddenly, out of blue, his best friend, long lost, happened to become a mindless killer. That can shatter anyone. And I didn’t know to how small a shard Steve was shattered. I could see his bruises, greenish-yellow and black from yesterday morning and purple-blue from the recent fight. Five marks on his neck, left by the metal hand, a weeping sore on his head, a long suggillation on his back – he must have fallen on something like a rail... But I couldn’t see what’s inside. Tony was visibly fuming. Steve made some bitter remarks and once was about to yell at Fury, and… that was it. He was known for concealing his pain, but now it was the problem. How much more can he take before he breaks down? As a SHIELD operative about to go into a fight under his command, I was extremely interested in him being sane and sound and in one piece. As a woman in love I was interested in this even more. I wanted him to stop suffering, or, if it’s impossible for now, to be in less pain.

But I didn’t know what to do for him to stop his suffering. I just watched him forcing himself to eat. He should be hungry, I was and so were Sam and Natasha. But he barely moved the fork between the tin of tuna and his mouth.

“How is your leg?” I asked, just to ask.

“Well… not so well. Fine threatens me with another surgery. After we’re done. He’s mad about tomorrow but there’s nothing he can do, I won’t stay out of the fight”.

“Maybe you should,” said Natasha.

“Will you?”

“I am expendable.”

“No one is expendable,” Steve said, slamming the table with his tin can. The table almost collapsed, but somehow survived.

“Except yourself, huh?”

“Cut it, Romanova. It’s not about me being expendable, it’s about me being more resilient than you. Being the only match for him…”

“I am extremely sorry, Rogers,” Stark came in, “but you looked nothing like a match for him. You looked like a punching dummy.”

“He caught me on the back foot, won’t happen again.”

“You think so?” gloves off Stark sat across the table and helped himself with coffee, ham and bread. “So tell me, if you get at each other, will you shoot first? And will you shoot to kill?”

Steve remained silent.

“A-ha, that’s what I mean,” said Stark. “You don’t have it in you, do you? Since he was your pal…”

“You are my pal,” snapped Steve. “He was… you have not a slightest idea what he was to me.”

“Why,” smirked Tony. “I have a plenty of ideas. You know, it’s considered normal nowadays. Well, some people are still homophobes, but with those muscles of yours you will have no problem with them. In Europe, you can even marry each other. Or… this is a plan? Save your one true love from evil vengeful Stark and be happy ever after?”

I saw Steve’s jaw hardened for a moment, his neck stiffened… And then he laughed softly.

“You sound like you are jealous, Tony. You really do. I should have known since that kiss in the basement – it felt rather eager. It wasn’t all about passing me the Widow’s bite, was it?”

I couldn’t help chuckling. Sam watched us over and said: “I am not sure if I wanted to know this, man.”

Tony was taken aback. Steve’s smile faded.

“We have to fight tomorrow. And until those helicarriers are down, I will fight to kill. I expect the same from you. No more, no less. None of us is going aftertheir private business until the mission is complete. Do I have your word for it?”

“What about after?” said Tony.

“It’s too long a shot. Who said any of us three survives the battle?”

“Indeed.”

“So, I have your word?”

“Yes, Rogers. You have it.”

“Good,” Steve sprawled on his sleeping bag and pulled the sweatshirt’s hood over his eyes. “Get some sleep then”.

“No rest for the wicked,” Tony grinned and engineered some Babel tower of a sandwich. “As far as you guys are brawny rather than brainy, I have to do something about that counter-algorithm of mine to dumb it down to the point where you just replace one blade with another. Guess who will tinker the blades?”

“Some playboy billionaire genius?” Steve smiled under his hood.

“Aaaand we have a winner!” Tony got up from the table with his multistorey sandwich. “Bye-bye, kids. See you on the briefing.”

Well, I honestly tried to take a nap. But… either it was because I was the least physically tired, or was it because it was cold on the dam premises, despite the sleeping bag, I couldn’t sleep.

I got up and went to the mess hall, had some coffee, exchanged a word or two with people I knew, used the toilet, and then returned to our, so to say, dormitory.

When I sat on my cot, I heard Steve whisper:

“Sharon…”

“What?”

“May I ask… Sorry, it’s so awkward, but could you please… cuddle with me for a while? Nothing improper, it’s just for warmth and… warmth”.

I laughed soundlessly and grabbed my sleeping bag.

“We recently confessed. It would be proper to have something improper.”

The cot was wide enough for both of us. He was not particularly big; he just had that gift of presence that made him look overwhelming.

We zipped our sleeping bags together and hugged, rather brotherly. I put my head on his shoulder, he buried his nose in my hair.

“You are hot,” I said in a whisper. “I mean your temperature. Are you alright?”

“99 is my normal, it’s OK”.

“I saw Rumlow,” I didn’t know why I said this. I felt his body stiffened a bit. “I wanted to follow him but Walsh talked me out of it”.

“He did good.  We cannot risk anyone… until tomorrow. ”

“If we traced them to their…”

“Nah. No good. All roads lead to the Triskelion.”

 “I should have killed him.”

“It was my decision to keep him alive for a distraction. Shame it didn’t work.”

Shame it was indeed. If Winter Soldier was sent for Rumlow, Steve wouldn’t have known him to be Bucky Barnes and the terrible dilemma wouldn’t tear him apart now.

“On the other hand…” whispered Steve.

Oh, no.

“It just occurred to me… why didn’t Pierce use him against me?”

“He did.”

“No, I mean earlier. When I pursued him he made no attempt to kill. Just flung my shield back at me. He was under orders not to engage with me. And after that… back in the Triskelion, in the elevator, in the... Rumlow had a point. Bucky could… give me a really hard time.”

I shuddered at the thought of Winter Soldier torturing Steve. My fingers squeezed on his shoulder, I pressed my face to his chest. He smelled with dry sweat and medicines and cheap liquid soap. He was warm. He was alive. And I desperately wanted him to stay that way.

“Well, I’m rather glad they didn’t…”

“So am I,” he stroked my back tenderly. “The question is – why?”

“As soon as they failed to break you, I don’t care.”

“Well, I care. I think they were afraid of him remembering me”.

“But he doesn’t remember you. He savaged you pretty well”.

“He hesitated for a while”.

I wasn’t there. I couldn’t tell. The only thing I knew Steve was an inch from being shot by the person he held dearest.

“Steve, you don’t go after him. You gave your word”.

“Actually, I pulled out the word from Stark. I didn’t give mine”.

I heard him smiling while saying this.

“So you give it now! Steve, promise me not to go after him! Promise!”

“Alright. I am not going after him. Not until the mission is complete”.

“And after that, too!”

“Sharon…” he hugged me tighter. “Of all people, I thought you wiould understand. After what you did when you saw me fell among philistines, you must understand why I cannot fail him.”

“You love him so much?”

He drew a long and heavy breath.

“Sometimes I curse these times when you cannot tell you love a man without being gravely misunderstood. Yes, I loved him. I still do. But if we were lovers… believe me, we just couldn’t be closer than we already were. No one could stick a blade between us. God, that sounds weird and most unhealthy, but that was the way.”

“He’s not the man you loved, Steve. Not anymore.”

“You don’t know it. No one knows. Remember what Rumlow told? They do something to him. Something unspeakable. They did it for seventy bloody years, I cannot stand the thought of it. They made him kill Howard and Maria. And now they make him fight me, like in some stupid Cúchulainn and Fear Diadh tale, and… Christ, this is thwarted in so many ways!”

He breathed unevenly, almost panted. I stroked his shoulder, then his chest.

“You will find the way,” said I, for consolation mostly. I really didn’t want him to risk himself against a lethal weapon who happened to be his former friend. He was certainly the man to lay down his life for his friends, and I wanted to come up with something so he needn’t do it.

“You know,” I said, “aunt Peggy told me she fell for you when you toppled the flagpole to get down that flag. You are clever, Steve. Tony may be unrivaled when it’s about tech, but you are really good with people. You can figure out how their minds work and build your tactic upon it…”

He kissed me on the mouth.

His lips were awkward, but persistent, firm and almost dry and hot and hungry. So unskillful. He had a chance to learn, I thought, after the Chitauri crisis, when the Avengers were the most glorified heroes of the world and he could walk throat-deep in girls, but he never used that chance, he kept faithful to the woman in her nineties, woman that kept forgetting him every time he left. He never kissed since 1945.

So I taught him. I slid my tongue into his mouth to lure his tongue out. I sucked gently on his lips, and he returned the caress. My lips swelled a little, my ovaries melted totally.

“Excuse me,” said Steve when he managed to tear himself from me. “I couldn’t wait until Carter woman kiss me first. Again.”

Oh, God, I thought. He made up his mind. He did it like back then in 1945, when he jumped on board of the Valkyrie, knowing it’s a one way ticket.

“Steve…”

“Actually, I really came up with something. And I would like you to help me…” he moved his KAFO against my foot. “I’ll need a driver.”

“You need to rest.”

“Come on. Neither of us can sleep anyway.”

“What are you up to?”

He made the most serious face.

“If you're gonna fight a war, you gotta wear a uniform.”

…It was surprisingly easy to talk Fury into Steve’s plan. He only wanted to send anyone but Steve to the Smithsonian, but Steve was adamant about going himself.

It was about midnight when we knocked on the back door of the Smithsonian exposition.

“Who’s there?” asked a very elderly guard, emerging from the depths of the building.

“A showpiece”, Steve stepped forth, holding his shield.

“Holy Mother!” the old man made a step back, as if he had been taken by a strong wind. “Man, is it really you? I mean… Captain Rogers?”

“In the flesh, sir,” Steve smiled.

“Get in!” the guard unlocked the door for us and hastily closed it after letting us in. “Good evening, lady. Do you know you are wanted, Cap? Some people say you are crazy, some people say you are a traitor…”

“And what do you say, sir?”

“Don’t sir me, Captain, you are older than me and outrank me. I could only make it to the Corporal.”

“So, Corporal, what do you think?”

Snow-white old man pulled at his moustache.

“I think, it's a toss-up which is worse. Either you went batshit crazy and killed a whole bunch of people, which is sad, or Nazi bastards had defeated us from the inside which is maddening as hell. Personally I gravely dislike both the options. You may not remember me, but I was there, D-day, Omaha-beach.”

“They gave us hell,” said Steve.

“Indeed. I was lying on the sand, bleeding as a pig. Managed to stop the blood, but couldn’t even raise my head, and the fucking krauts showered us with bullets, so no one could drag me from the firing line. Day and night. Until you came and broke through their defenses. I hated your guts, man. Why did you come on the second day only? You could have saved not only me.”

“I came when I was ordered to come,” said Steve. “I’m sorry, Mr. …”

“Lee,” the guard gave him a hand. “Stan Lee. Beat it, kiddo, I harbor no grudge. I knew you were not the one to give orders. But that moment… God, I hated you. And now I watch over your exhibit. Irony.”

“Corporal Lee,” said Steve. “It’s going to be worse than Omaha beach. I need your help.”

“And if I don’t help?”

“I’m afraid I will have to use force.”

“Whaddaya need?”

“My old uniform.”

Mr. Lee shook his head, but not in refuse.

“Man, I am so fired.”

“I will give you a recipe for it,” promised Steve.

And so he did. While Corporal Stan Lee undressed the mannequin, Steve took the guestbook and wrote in his angular handwriting:

“I claimed my old uniform from the government property. It was not Mr. Lee’s fault. I used force. There was absolutely nothing he could do.

Cpt. Steven Grant Rogers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baba Yaga, kostyanaya noga - Natasha refers to the Russian folklore character, Old Hag - Bone Leg. Really scary.


	12. Those to whom evil is done. The Asset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rather short, this one :)

A man on the bridge. It hurt to remember. The fall. Fear and nausea. Cry. I was falling. Where? His face above. His hand. Red glove. Never reached. Fell. Fear and pain. Just forget.

 

_Who the hell is Bucky?_

 

A woman. Her hair, red. Her lips, plush. The smell between her thighs when she tried to headlock and strangle him. The swell in his groin, sweet, when she kissed. This he wanted to remember, though he knew they would never let him.

_Sir, he's...he's unstable. Erratic._

 

Yes, that’s what he was. Unstable. ‘Cause it hurt. Hurt so much, to remember.

 

_Mission report._

 

A handler. Priority. Submit. Funny that he couldn’t. He could go deeper then the voice, he could fall…

 

_Mission report, now_ _._

 

A hit across the face. Hurt, not really. Way less then really.

 

 **“** The man on the bridge... Who ( **the hell is Bucky** ) was he?”

 

The handler sat opposite. His face, composed and solemn. Words. I knew so many words, why didn’t I know who the hell Bucky was? Why did it hurt so much?

 

“ You met him earlier this week on another assignment,” the handler said.

 

So it was. A shield, powerfully thrown. An order, not to engage. Why did the handler change the order?

Why did I ask why? Never asked before, even inside. Just went and completed the mission.

 

**“I knew him.”**

 

The handler knew words, too.

 

“Your work has been a gift to mankind”.

 

Words.

 

“ You shaped the century, and I need you to do it one more time.”

 

Words.

 

“ Society is at a tipping point between order and chaos. Tomorrow morning we're gonna give it a push.”

 

More words.

 

“ But, if you don't do your part, I can't do mine, and HYDRA can't give the world the freedom it deserves.”

 

Freedom, this word made no sense, but somehow it was connected with the man on the bridge. Freedom, democracy and an apple pie…

 

“But I knew him.”

 

The handler turned away.

 **“** Prep him.”

 

More pain, that meant. That made sense.  Pain was a way to make him forget.

 

“He's been out of cryo-freeze too long.”

 

That’s why he recalled so many words. Watched things, recalled their names…

 

“Then wipe him and start over.”

 

…to forget them again.

 

Resistance was always futile, somehow he remembered. So he let them strap him to the arm-chair and opened his mouth to receive a mouthpiece. He would cry. He never tried to hold back. There was no sense.

 

He thought of her lips while biting on silicone. He thought of her hands while the metal covered his face. He thought of her legs around his waist, while the machine hummed.

 

And then he cried.   


	13. For the harvest is sown. Tony Stark

 

“This is what, tits? You have made the armor with tits?”

Usually I don’t like people laughing their asses off about me, but I had to admit I often laughed my ass over Rhodey, so it could have been time to turn my other cheek on him.

“It’s an anatomical breastplate,” I said calmly.

“It is certainly a breast, very anatomic, but nothing like a plate! You know Tony, when I went to Britain, they showed me to the museum in Leeds, the Royal armory…”

I knew what he was talking about. I’ve been to Leeds, too.

“Shut up, Rhodey.”

“…Wait, that was interesting! Henry VIII’s armor, with a big codpiece, like, really big!”

“Rhodey, I got the joke…”

“I saw that thing and thought: why doesn’t Tony make himself an armour with that one? That would be outstanding!”

“Ha. Ha. Ha.”

“But seeing you going to battle with tits – that was beyond my imagination!”

 “First, I made ATHENA for Pepper. Second, I am not going to battle in it, I will have it on the remote control.”

“I bet Pep didn’t appreciate your gift.”

I scowled at him. Pepper really was mad at me for my heroing stuff, and when I tried to engage her – not literally, though… Why didn’t I try to engage her literally? Well, she was mad, that’s it. She didn’t want an armour, she didn’t want fighting, didn’t want me to go fighting, so on. And she was persuasive as hell. Armour tits had nothing to do with it.

Or had they?

It wasn’t a proper time for thinking of this anyway. I finished checking ATHENA’s systems and went to coffee-machine.

People started arriving to the mess hall one by one. Hill wheeled Fury in. Then came that Falcon guy. Natasha walked in, still a bit infirm on her feet. And finally arrived our battle couple, Cap and Sharon. Cap was still cluttering his KAFO against the concrete floor.

Air had become a bit tense.

Shit.

I couldn’t explain why I was so angry at Rogers. Maybe, it was because he had every right to be angry at me. I forgot to put those ends together, to tell him that his friend was Winter Soldier and my parents’ murderer. Because of me, he was caught off guard and almost killed. But also I had a feeling that Rogers will try to spare the bastard. He may have loved my old man, but he never knew my mom, and he adjusted to them being dead long ago, and living dog is better than dead lion. He hadn’t seen that footage, hadn’t seen them being mercilessly squashed. And if he had – could he change his mind? For him, that dick was his friend since before the Ice Age, pun intended. The only person from that war, except Aunt Peg, still alive – and still not remembering him, too. I knew he will try to cheat me, to rob me from my justice – and I was mad in advance.

But I bit the bullet and showed nothing. We had a work to do, some helicarriers to down, some bad guys to smash. Smash. Where is Banner when he’s needed? Last thing I heard from him, he was somewhere in Congo, spreading vaccine against some nasty fever…

“Is everybody here?” asked Fury. “Okay then. Let’s get down to business.”

Hill unfolded on the table a holopanel that showed the scheme of helicarier.

“Once the Helicarriers reach three thousand feet, they'll triangulate with Insight satellites becoming fully weaponized”, she said. “We need to breach those carriers and replace their targeting blades with our own. One or two won't cut it. We need to link all three carriers for this to work, because if even one of those ships remains operational a whole lot of people are gonna die».

Fury produced three blades I tinkered in the past two hours.

“We have to assume everyone aboard those carriers is HYDRA”, he said. “We need to get pass them, insert the server blades, and maybe, just maybe, we can salvage what's left...”

Rogers interrupted: “We're not salvaging anything. We're not just taking down the carriers, Nick, we're taking down SHIELD”.

“We had this talk already,” Fury sighed. “Why, Steve? Why ruin everything instead of weed out the bad seed?”

“Because you cannot tell the bad seed from good,” answered Steve. “HYDRA grew right under your nose and nobody noticed”.

“Why do you think we're meeting in this cave? I noticed.”

“And how many paid the price before you did?»

“Look, I didn't know about Barnes.”

“It’s not about Barnes, for the goodness’ sake! Well, not only about Barnes! It’s about Howard and Maria Stark, about the attempt to nuke Manhattan, about hiring sadistic murderers like Rumlow and so on!  SHIELD, HYDRA, it all goes.”

“He's right”, Hill suddenly said.

I was taken by surprise. For me, Hill always was as attached to Fury as his body part. His missed eye, to be precise. She almost read his mind. I never saw her objecting or arguing with Fury… Until now.

Fury was surprised no less than I. He looked at Romanova, and Romanova nodded. He looked at Rhodey, and Rhodey shrugged. He looked at Sam.

“Don't look at me. I do what he does, just slower,” said Sam.

Fury looked at me.

Unlike Sam, I could imagine the amount of shit that was about to hit the fan. Some of that shit was mine, some was my old man`s. Dad was not a saint, as every weapon manufacturer, but he kept his nose clean, and morning to come would get his reputation down the drain. Mine, too, but mine reputation was there many times, it knew the way back…

“I am on that list,” I said. “And SHIELD failed to protect my folks. To hell with SHIELD”.

“Well... Looks like you're giving the orders now, Captain”, said Fury.

 Well, it definitely looked like that, because Fury had no one else to have the job done. Our plan had only a tiny shade of success, but the plan Fury worked out earlier had even thinner chances. Without us, he would have some vanilla SHIELD agents against STRIKE brutes. Plus Hill and himself, which would be definitely something weren’t he thrashed so thoroughly.

“We’ll combine your plan and our plan”, said Steve. “Sharon, Maria, agent Walsh, I and four other agents go inside through the tunnel and docks, guised as techs. Sam needs a high start, so he goes with us. Natasha infiltrates with the World Council suite. Tony and Colonel Rhodes wait on the Potomac bank for helicarriers to start. Tony takes 01, Colonel goes for 02, Sam – 03. We take the control room and rally as much agents as we can. Maria and Agent Walsh stay there with two agents until the helicarriers are engaged with the satellite, and then retarget them for each other. After that, they run down to the nearest emergency exit. Sharon and I with two other agents and everyone we can get on our side fight our way to the conference hall. Natasha?”

“I wait for you there,” she nodded.

“And I come by the chopper to give you an authorized access, and evacuate the survivors, if I find one,” Fury smirked. “And may Force be with us…”

Everyone looked at Cap.

“What?” he said.

“Come on, you haven’t seen it still?” – I asked.

“What?”

“Star Wars, of course!”

“It’s on my list.”

“Man…” I shook my head. “Today, we both fight to survive, and after that I’ll have you locked in the room with a good plasma screen and a bucket of popcorn, until you are through all three.”

“There are six of them, aren’t there?” specified Rogers.

“Only three are worth watching,” said Sam. “From fourth to sixths. Classic.”  
“Newer ones?”

“No, older ones! Prequels are crap,” said Sharon.

“I still cannot get it,” sighed Rogers. “Why they started the story from the middle?”

“They didn’t know it will be the middle,” I explained. “They didn’t even know they will have filmed the next two.”

“So why they called it Episode IV?”

“It’s complicated. I’ll tell you the whole story after we kick HYDRA’s collective ass.”

“Am I the only one who likes prequels?” asked Fury.

“Looks like that.”

“And am I the only one who thinks how HYDRA will respond to our actions?”

“No, you are not,” answered Rogers. “But only our actions we can determinate.”

“Suppose you are HYDRA, Cap. Suppose you are Pierce. What would you do, knowing what they know now?”

Rogers frowned and then he got it.

“Oh, God…”

And then I got it, too…


	14. The unmentionable odour of death. Brock Rumlow

It was all over when I finally got to the Bank vault. Which probably saved my life, because when they asked me, how it happened that Cap decimated my squad, I could answer: just like how you losers failed to get him despite having Winter on your side.  
They pickled me in a cell for a while and then brought me to Pierce.  
“Mr Rumlow”, he said. “Do you really think your slackness will go unpunished?”  
I weighted carefully every word. I knew that Pierce was nothing like those movie villains that cry “You failed me!” and chock their subordinates left and right, but the third chance is what you earn, not what you take for granted.  
I respected the man. A lot. I am nobody’s mindless fan, but I can recognize a great man when I see one. Mr. Pierce was a hell of a man. Personally I don’t give a single fuck for politicians, but Mr. Pierce was special. He started from the bottom, served in Nam as a simple GI, not some West Point prick, though he was from the family of means. And after that, he went to Berkley, no less, and after that he made the career in CIA. And he made it not by jumping from chair to chair. He was a real deal, that's why I followed him since the moment I knew what HYDRA was and what it wanted to achieve.  
I respected Mr. Pierce gravely, and what I felt now was not fear, but suffocating shame, because I failed him.  
“No,” I said. “I think you are short of hands. And I owe you. Will you punish me or not – it’s up to you. But the job must be done, and I want to see it done.”  
Pierce watched me narrowly and silently. Then he smiled slightly and asked:  
“Rogers obviously had his hands on you. How did you escape?”  
As much as I wanted to skip the part where woman beat me, lies could cost too much, so I said:  
“T’wasn’t Rogers. T’was that little bitch, Agent 13. I was tazed at the moment. After that, they just let me go. They had no place to keep me and no balls to kill me.”  
He turned on the record and I recognized my interrogation. I was glad I said nothing useful to them.  
“It is everywhere in the Internet, our technicians slog their guts out to extinguish it, but it spreads like bush fire. You let yourself to be captured, you started to wag your tongue, and though you said nothing of importance, you gave them evidence…”  
He made a pause pregnant with trine at least. He was not expecting me to lay tits up and wait for a punishing hand. I should prove I am worth my salt. I should defend myself.  
“No court will take this record as an evidence,” said I.  
“Indeed. But there is such thing as public opinion.”  
“Tomorrow morning, there will be no such thing as public opinion.”  
“We still have to hold out until tomorrow morning. And we hang on by the skin of our teeth. Our people in the Senate, Army and FBI – they are few. They are weighty, they are influential – but few. Though they do what they can to hinder the investigation, tomorrow morning is still long hours ahead, and many things can change in these hours. The balance of power has changed. Stark received a new armour, we couldn’t intercept the thing. And then, Iron Patriot joined them. Which means: they have three airborns”.  
He paused and I knew he wants me to speak my mind.  
“They will attack,” said I. “Rogers will not stop until he’s dead.”  
“And you failed to kill him. Twice.”  
“Like the others.”  
“The others hadn’t had him restrained. What was your mistake?”  
“I should have broken both his legs, that was my mistake. But the others had Winter Soldier,” I drew a deep breath and asked: “Why didn’t you let me use Winter to break Rogers?”  
He looked at me intensely, as if I was some exotic butterfly.  
“Do you know who Winter Soldier is?”  
“Some Russian freak we’ve borrowed in exchange for nonintervention in Ukrainian affair.”  
“He is not Russian. He is genuinely American. Come.”  
I followed him down, to the basement where we kept Winter Soldier in the bank vault.  
He slept after the clean-up. I envied him a little: he was allowed to sleep. I had only a short rest in the car that gave me a lift to DC. Nice old couple, I told them I was robbed and beat up by some rowdies, and they fed, dressed me and gave me a ride and fifty greens. Real good Samaritans, the spirit of old America we were trying to defend...  
So, the guy was an American, too. That felt somehow… wrong. Russians can do what the fuck they want to their own; they were always like that, weren’t they? But they laid their hands on one of ours somehow, and it felt wrong.  
I saw his face up close, without the protective mask, maybe at first time. There was something childish about his face, though he was in mid-thirties or even older. Must have been a sweet baby-boy in the prime of his youth, I thought.  
“Lieutenant Rumlow, meet James Buchanan Barnes, Captain America’s best friend.”  
You must be kidding, I wanted to say, but just bit my tongue.  
“But… how?” I asked instead.  
“Russians found him in 1945,” said Mr. Pierce. “They wondered how he survived the fall and missing of his hand. Asked him a question or two, but he was amnesiac already or played a fool smartly. So, they considered to exchange him for someone of theirs, when Wegener – Zola’s henchman, whom they had taken prisoner – recognized him as a guy Zola experimented on. The man with Erskine’s serum in blood. They had their analogue of Operation Paperclip, special prisons for scientists, both Germans and Russians. In one of those prisons, they created Winter Soldier. A perfect killing machine. Their own version of Captain America, but conveniently obedient.”  
They kept him frozen, I thought. Not only to prevent aging, though it was also handy. But when a man, you know, lives… he leaves marks. He eats, drinks, spends money, meets people… Even underground, you do that. Unless you are frozen meat, sleeping by years, until they need someone somewhere to be killed and get you out of the fridge… That’s how he remained a ghost. All those years…  
I shuddered, God knows why. We were about to kill 20 million people, most of them Americans, and still I shuddered inside because of what had been done to one of them – to Rogers’ pal of all people!  
I looked at Mr. Pierce and said nothing. Sacrifices were to be made. This guy enlisted to lay his life for his country, long time ago – so what, he will do it now. Everyone plays his part.  
“He recognized Rogers,” said Mr. Pierce. “We had to be sure so we wiped him. Conditions were lost. That’s why I kept him from contact with Rogers until it became absolutely necessary.”  
He gestured me out and we left the vault.  
“So, what are we to do with you, Rumlow?” Mr. Pierce stuck his hands in his pockets.  
“It is for you to decide,” I said calmly. He did not order to execute me at once; he talked to me and told me the truth about Winter, so I was ninety percent sure I am on board.  
“Don’t think I’ll forget your failure,” said Mr. Pierce. “You would be dead, were it not for the shortage of people and the fact that you are the best tactician on our side.”  
“Thank you, sir.”  
He measured me with eye. I was still dressed in the sweat suit my good Samaritans gave me. The old man was rather short and bulky, so my hands stuck out of the sleeves and the suit was baggy around the waist and the ass. I looked more pathetic than Rogers did in his stupid skirt.  
“It’s not a great shame to lose to the uberman,” said Mr. Pierce, as if he read my mind. “And I believe that failure is, above all, a lesson. What did you learn from your failure?”  
It took me no time to give an answer. I had a whole day to think it over.  
“We cannot rely upon outnumbering them.”  
“Indeed,” Mr. Pierce rocked from heels to toes. “Taking into account that we don’t really know how many of them are out there, we cannot. What else?”  
“I wonder how he recruited the others. It was only him and Romanov at first. Then Carter and Stark joined. After that – War Machine and some other people that gave Rollins a kick…”  
“Maria Hill,” said Mr. Pierce. “She was here in a minute after Winter shot Fury. He must have called her after the first attack… or right before it. She enrolled some people. They have a base somewhere. And we don’t know where, though it must be somewhere beside the river.”  
“Why do you think so?”  
“Because Stark summoned one of his armours and we traced it to Alexandria, where it plunged into the river and never showed up again.”  
“We have to comb the banks. I shall lead the team.”  
“No. We do not have enough men. Because half of the STRIKE team perished and the others are extremely busy with preparations.”  
I felt ashamed. Again. They were good guys and I let Rogers decimate them.  
“So what do we do?”  
“They will attack in the morning, that’s for sure. We will meet them here.”  
I mused over it for a while.  
“Sounds crazy. They have War Machine, Iron Man and that guy with wings, OK, still they are not enough to down three helicarriers. What firepower they can have?”  
“I’ve got specs on War Machine, he carries a heavy machinegun and two mini-ATMs. Stark is a mystery. He’s officially forbidden to carry any weaponry, but he has lasers, because he persuaded the Senate they are “tools”, not weapon, and mini-rockets, which are called “mining tools” and his repulsors, which are motion drivers, not weapon, of course, and whatever he cooked secretly, for every time we impose a ban on something, he invents something else.”  
“And the Falcon guy?”  
“Samuel Wilson. He is a paratrooper, who happened to be in illegal possession of army property, so-called ‘Falcon-7’. Dropped from the arsenal because of heavy personnel casualties. Cannot carry more than 12 kilos of weaponry, so it’s small arms, nothing more.”  
“So, they are no match for the helicarriers.”  
“You think so? Brock, we talk about the man that jumped on board of the superjet, killed the crew with his bare hands and killed Schmidt, his equal. And the other man, who carried the nuclear rocket on his shoulders, literally, to deliver it to the alien ship. Sam Wilson is a dark horse, but these two wouldn’t pick any college boy. And War Machine’s credentials are remarkable, too. And let’s not forget Black Widow. And the girl who smashed your face…”  
“It doesn’t count, I was stunned!”  
He laughed. Well, I may have looked ridiculous…  
“What would you do in their place?”  
“With all due respect, sir… I would kill you.”  
He nodded.  
“That’s definitely an option. But mind that Rogers knows who we are. Cut off one head – two others take its place. What else?”  
“I would try to intercept the helicarriers before they started. In the air they cannot stand a chance, but in the docks and in the control room it’s only a fight between men.”  
“Good. One correction, though: between men and enhanced men”.  
“Yessir.”  
“So what do we do?”  
“Start helicarriers before they arrive. Start them now. Level everyone listed.”  
“Alas, we cannot start them without a proper authorization from the Council. The Council had seen to it.”  
“Then…” the decision came to me out of thin air, good and neat. “We take hostages.”


End file.
